Wake Up, For Us

~6~

Like most people of the twenty-first century, you have a smart phone. It's hardly a notable point about your life, but you spend quite a lot of time scrolling and scrolling through dubious news articles, amusing videos, and photos of things that your friends found interesting.

One day, the words are different. A photo slowly climbs your screen and you read its words several times, over and over. It tells you that you are in a coma, and that the world in which you find your self is not real. It tells you to wake up, "For us".

On another day, you would have ignored it, some strange joke of someone with far too much time on their hands.

But this day has been long and those words have presented themselves many times. The first had been on the back of your instant coffee's packaging, the second had been on your cup - at the café you visit every morning after discreetly pouring the bitter mug-full down the sink and leaving, so as not to offend Sam, who believes that you love the coffee waiting for you when you wake up.

The next was a text message from an unknown number and the penultimate was a voice mail from an unfamiliar, almost robotic, mouth.

The last time was heard from your left, as you cradled the hand of your sleeping child in your own injured palm, sitting in a hospital ward. Sam whispered them in desperation after so much violence, and after days of hearing nothing but silence.