Light (2)

"Mister?" Wilder tilts his head slightly. "You've been spacing out for a couple few minutes now."

"Ah. Sorry," Asher says sheepishly.

"Anyway, I think you have someone to meet."

He couldn't possibly mean Constance, could he? Where did he learn to get all this information about us?

Not waiting for a reply, Wilder stands up from his stool and starts walking away. He slowly fades away as his silhouette morphs into the shadows cast from the endless rows of hospital beds.

Asher felt a rising panic build within the insides of him. "No!" He gets up quickly from his bed, tripping over a few tubes attached into his body. The large room was quiet, with the echoes of his cries reverberating against the grey walls. His breathing quickens as he looks around at the beds of countless sleeping bodies, all unconsciously lying in sheets of white and grey.

"I don't want to be alone anymore."

"I'm still here, Mister," Wilder suddenly appears from the distance. "Follow me."

They walk through a maze of beds--with all sorts of people lying on them. He thought, for a brief moment--that he saw the familiar face of a co-worker in the hospital once--but he couldn't have been sure. Self-consciously, he glances over at the glass doors and catches the reflection of a man in his mid thirties. Tall, lean, with dark circles under his eyes, the man looks straight through him into his empty, transparent soul. His skin reflects off the faint fluorescent lights, faintly glowing beneath the darkness. That can't be me, can it?

Wilder abruptly stops. "We're here."

He lifts his gaze from the pale reflection and rests them upon the figure in front of him. Asher kneels down to stare at the pale, unconscious face lying within the colorless bed sheets, as he felt his heart drop to his feet.

Constance sleeps away--her brows occasionally lifting up and narrowing--almost as if she was dreaming. But she was dreaming. Everyone in this room, from young to old, was still dreaming the exact same dream.

The dream had continued without him.

"Hey Constance, wake up!" He shouts.

He hurries to the other beds. "Wake up, guys!"

A few meters away, he sees the unconscious faces of Jamie and Evelyn lying on their individual beds. Their eyes were closed. He lifts his head, only to once again see the endless rows of hospital beds stretch out in front of him. Endless rows of resting ghosts, allowing their lives to get eaten away by their own hallucination and fantasies.

"You're all living in a dream! This world isn't real! Snap out of it!"

But what could only be heard, was, once again, the sad echoes of his desperate cries. The people continue to sleep their lives away on the hospital beds, relying on all but a few tubes to keep their hearts pumping and blood flowing.

"You won't be able to wake them up. It's a natural process. One has to wake up by themselves," Wilder says in a dry, bitter tone.

"And how do you do that?" he asks nervously.

The doors of the room open. He sees the young mother, the group of high school students, and the middle-aged man walk through the doors. He had only briefly seen them on the TV news and once, in the hospital wards. But they look different up close; something was shining deep inside of them. It was the same glow that Wilder emitted during his stay at the hospital; warm, everlasting, and peaceful. That moment, he realizes that the answers to his questions were in front of his eyes.

"You die in the dream, of course..."

"... but you start living in the real world again."