Wake Up and Breathe

A short story

Zoe opened her eyes and breathed in the fresh air. After her eyes adjusted to the light all around her, she looked next to her and saw her husband Gregory looking at her, smiling. "It's about time. I was hoping you'd wake up soon."

Zoe had been asleep for twenty years, she soon came to find out. Gregory had become accustomed to all the dead and sleeping people around him... at work, at church, in the store... everywhere he went, there were bodies either rotting or snoring. He spent much of his time trying to wake the sleeping people, because at least then he'd have some help trying to revive the dead ones -- and there were so many of those that it was almost unbearable. One of the sleeping people had been particularly special to him, so he brought her home to live with him. She continued to sleep, but he knew that if he was patient and trusted God, she'd eventually wake up and help him.

And today was the day! He was so glad. "Lie still for just a moment and get your bearings. You've been asleep for a long time; it wouldn't do to stand up too suddenly, or you might fall down and go back to sleep," he told her. "Let's just talk."

So they talked of many things, and soon Zoe felt strong enough to sit up. Gregory took her hands to steady her, and helped brace her until she was able to hold herself up. "I never realized I was asleep, Gregory," she said. "I must've been dreaming."

"You were. They all are, all around us. They're lying there, dreaming, thinking they're awake, when they're not," he said. "It gets discouraging, because there are all these dead people all around us, and I can't wake anyone up to help me bring them back to life. I could spend all my time doing that, but I keep thinking how much more efficient it would be if enough living people were actually awake. We'd get so much further."

"I can see that," Zoe said. She noticed a rotting form just out the window, on the front porch, and without hesitating or thinking, she stood to her feet, went out to the corpse, bent down next to it and began to breathe on it. Color began to return to the body, and soon a lovely woman stood to her feet, breathing on her own and leaping for joy. "I'm alive!" she kept shouting as she ran down the street.

Energized by this, Zoe turned to another corpse lying in the front yard and began to breathe on it as well. Nothing happened, however. Gregory came alongside her and also breathed, and what had been shriveled and dead suddenly filled out and unfolded, and a handsome young man stood to his feet with an expression of intense gratitude and gladness on his face. "Thank you for sharing your life with me," he wept happily. He immediately went to the next several dead bodies lying around him, breathing on them enthusiastically.

"Why didn't that man come to life when I breathed on him?" Zoe asked.

"Sometimes it takes more than one person breathing on them," Gregory said. "And some of them just don't ever come to life, no matter how long you breathe on them. But you can't stop doing it. Sometimes you have to move on to another body and just pray that another person who's awake sees them and stops by to breathe on them. Perhaps that will be the breath that will do the trick; we never know. It's just our job to breathe on them."

"And I've wasted the last twenty years sleeping, when I could've been doing this?!? Unbelievable," Zoe gasped. "This is amazing. We have got to help some of these sleeping people wake up and experience this like us. We could get so much more done if they'd wake up." She bent down to a snoring form, shook its shoulders gently at first, then more firmly. "Wake up! Please! You're sleeping... you're dreaming. It's not real! You've got to wake up!"

The woman grumpily opened her eyes. "Leave me alone," she said, and rolled back over onto her other side and began instantly to snore again.

Zoe shook her again. "You don't understand! You're asleep and there's so much to do!"

The woman, without opening her eyes, reached up and slapped Zoe hard, leaving a bright red mark on her cheek and even raking her with her sharp fingernails. "OW!" Zoe yelped, and fell backwards. Gregory caught her just in time. "Some of them do that," he said sadly. "I'm really sorry. Don't let it get to you."

"That's going to leave a permanent mark," she sobbed.

Gregory helped dab some of the blood and dressed her wound. "Yes, it probably will. And it probably won't be the only scar you'll end up with. But we can't quit, Zoe. It's too important."

"I know," she said, her breath catching slightly. "Give me just a minute."

"You can't. If you take a minute, you'll go back to sleep, and once you go back to sleep, it's even harder to wake you up than it was before. No, please. Stay right here with me, and let's keep talking. It won't hurt so much eventually, I promise."

They went on, shaking the sleeping people all around them, for several years. There were more and more all around them, since apparently sleepers liked to congregate where they'd be cared for. They tried shaking them, to little avail. They tried tiptoeing all around them in an attempt to find some dead ones to breathe on, but there were just too many asleep... and the sleeping ones were some of the most demanding ones.

You see, one of the main problems with the sleeping ones is that they couldn't be left alone. They required regular feeding and often soiled themselves, and it fell to Zoe and Gregory to care for them. Since sleeping people choke easily, they had to be fed through a tube into their stomachs. Zoe and Gregory were so thankful when better and more efficient diapers became available, because it was becoming more and more difficult to keep up.

Some of the sleeping people were starving to death right before their eyes because they refused to allow Zoe and Gregory to care for them at all. Either they were convinced by their dreams that they were, in fact, eating, or they were resentful that others might be receiving more food in their tubes than they did, and angrily refused to be fed. Some of them actually got up and walked around in their sleep, which was rather frightening to Zoe because at first she had been convinced that they, too, were awake... only to find soon that they were still completely asleep. In any case, Zoe and Gregory, in despair, left them alone. For a while, the two of them even tried lying down and going to sleep themselves, thinking perhaps it would be less stressful than trying too hard to wake them up. But by now they'd both been awake long enough that even though they lay there, eyes closed, trying desperately to achieve sleep, they could no longer fall asleep themselves. Once they were really
this awake, there really was no going back.

The final straw came one day, when Zoe found a couple of truly dead ones. To her horror, the sleepers rolled over on top of them, preventing her from breathing on them. She tried, and just as a little color began to return and they began to stir, more sleepers piled atop them and they could not move. She wept in despair.

One day Zoe suddenly spotted an opening through the throngs of sleepers. "Gregory! Look!" she shouted excitedly. There, through the small opening, they both saw hundreds and hundreds of people walking around, bright-faced and laughing, and breathing on dead people at an alarmingly exciting rate. "Gregory, we have to go there!" she said.

"I think you're right, Zoe," he said wearily. "We don't have any more time to breathe on dead people because all these sleepers require so much from us."

Zoe started down the path to the opening. "You go on ahead," Gregory told her. "I'll catch up shortly. I need to shake just a couple more people first... I just can't leave without trying once more."

"Okay, Gregory," she smiled. She turned and began to run toward the clearing. She emerged into the midst of all the awakened people, recognizing a few of them as people she'd been able to breathe on before she'd gotten so busy caring for sleepers. They welcomed her into their midst and introduced her to all the people around her who'd been quite dead and were now alive. She called out to Gregory.

"C'mon, Gregory! You've got to come see this!" Zoe shouted.

"I'm almost there," Gregory shouted back. "Just a couple more minutes."

Eventually he joined her among the living. "We almost didn't make it out of there," he said ruefully. "I wish we could've woken up a few of them. There are still a bunch over there who are calling for you in their sleep."

"I can't go back, Gregory," Zoe said softly. "I don't belong with the sleepers, and I can't keep feeding them. Maybe if no-one feeds them, they'll wake up hungry and begin to figure out what's happened."

"I hope so, Zoe," Gregory said. "I hope they don't completely die out from starvation just because they weren't able to wake up."

Zoe heard several of the ones she'd cared for, calling out to her desperately, but she knew that she could not go back to them. Babysitting sleepers couldn't come close to the thrill of seeing the dead come back to life.

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That's the end of my little story for now. There may be more chapters to it at some point in the future.