AWAKE

            Once upon a time a man lived in a town called Materiaville. The people who lived there were very sleepy all the time. In fact, a lot of the people hated being awake so much that they often drank special draughts to help them sleep. And after some time, most of the people didn't need to drink the draughts; they fell into a permanent sleep. The others spent their time either half awake, or dozing. It was rare to find anyone who was actually awake. The youngest ones were fully awake, and spent their time enjoying it, and accidentally waking up the dozing older ones, who grumbled against them, and gave them X-BOXs to help them sleep, too.

One day the little man went to a nearby town called Todefullia. And he was amazed to find that everyone who lived there was awake. “Join us!” They cried, “See what it’s like to be awake….there’s not much life in sleep.” On the town hall was an strange inscription that said:

Wake, O Sleeper. Rise From the Dead and Christ will Shine Upon You.

The little man observed how they were actually awake. He began to live with them, and realised that life awake was different to life asleep.  The food began to have taste….the wine was sweeter, and the music, laughter and love was flowing through the man’s veins for the first time in his life.  

But as time went on, he also saw why the people from Materiaville avoided being awake. The days seemed to go forever, and when there was pain, it seemed to sting more. Also, when people are awake they are forced to see each other in all their beauty and ugliness.

During his stay at Todefullia, the man learnt that soon an event called the Great Awakening would happen. When everyone would be shook to life. The scary thing, the man was told, was that when everyone was shaken, some would not wake up. And some would wake up, and hate being awake. They would spend their time searching for a way to go back to sleep.

The urgency of this event’s coming stirred the man into action.

The man stayed in Todefullia for a year, and then decided to go back to his home. He promised to try and wake the people up in Materiaville, so that they could also experience the Awakened Life. The Todefullians seemed reluctant as they watched him leave.

It turned out they had good reason, because within a small amount of time the man began to forget how good it was to be awake. Pain struck, and a full time job hit. Surrounded by sleeping people, it began to be too hard to stay awake.

The trouble is, once you have been awake, it’s very hard to go fully back to sleep. The man downed the sleeping draughts, but they didn’t last. Each time, he would surface back to reality, feel the sting of pain and quickly gulp more draughts.

After a while, the man discovered that he couldn’t easily wake up, that the moments of lucidity were few and far between. Desperately, he tried to stop drinking the draughts that seemed to have befogged him, and feel again the feelings of pain and love. It took a while, but eventually he could slap the feeling back into himself, open his eyes, and be awake again.

“Oh no!” He thought to himself, “So much time has gone by while I was sleeping.” And the man saw that to be awake with love and pain, was far better than being asleep with nothing.

Realising that the sleep was a curse, he began to frantically wake up his family. One opened their eyes hazily and grunted, “You shouldn’t eat sugar.” then turned over and went back to sleep.

His grandfather barely stirred. The most worrying ones were those who didn’t move. They couldn’t feel his urgent shaking. Their sleep was like that of the dead.

He received varying degrees of response. The younger ones still remembered what it was like to be awake, and most of them got up more easily.

Some others got angry at the shaking, and sleep walked over and beat the crap out of the man.

Eventually, the man gave way to the tempting pull of the sleep, and dozed off.