The Boy Who Slept to Wake
From Letters from the Other Side
The first time Tim felt the truth, he was twelve years old.
He had fallen asleep on his grandfather's dusty couch after school, one sock missing and peanut butter still clinging to the corners of his mouth. In his dream, he stood barefoot in a desert with violet skies and rivers that ran like quicksilver. A man with eyes like old maps touched his shoulder and said only, "You've been here before."
When Tim woke up, he was crying—but he didn't know why.
Now twenty-five, he never told anyone about the dreams. Not his mother, who still clung to his baby pictures like they were proof he existed. Not his ex-girlfriend, who accused him of always being "half here, half gone." And definitely not his therapist, who blamed the dreams on sleep paralysis and "disassociated memory."
Because what Tim saw wasn't fantasy. It wasn't fractured or floating or strange. It was... truer than the waking world. More coherent. In that other realm, the air tasted of clarity. He could smell honesty on the wind. Every tree, every stone hummed with names and meaning.
The dreamworld didn't flicker like the world of the living. It pulsed.
The real world—that's what felt like the illusion. Flat smiles. Recycled conversations. The way time passed, not with flow, but with obligation.
And still, Tim stayed.
He stayed for Sunday dinners with his mother, who now had arthritis in her hands but still made his favorite sweet bread. He stayed for video calls with his best friend Marcus, who had moved to Berlin and always laughed too loud. He stayed for the random moments—wind through an open window, the scent of wet cement, the slow magic of dusk. He told himself these were real enough. These mattered.
But every night, when his eyes closed, the veil lifted.
He always returned to the same place: a temple that floated over water, anchored to nothing. Its columns shimmered between marble and mist, and at its heart stood the girl.
He didn't know her name. He never asked. And yet, he loved her.
Not like a man loves a woman. Not quite. It was more like recognition. Like finding a diary you wrote in another lifetime and realizing it had been written to you, not by you.
She never aged. Never changed. But her presence grew heavier each time, as though she carried a truth too big to keep hidden much longer.
One night, as the stars above them rearranged into ancient glyphs, she spoke.
"You keep waking up. But you're not awake."
Tim frowned. "What does that mean?"
She stepped closer, her voice like moonlight breaking through fog.
"You're living someone else's lie. You've memorized a life that was never yours to keep."
"I have a job. I have people who love me. I exist."
"Existing isn't the same as living," she whispered.
That night, when Tim woke up, something had changed. The light in his room felt artificial. His own breath sounded like someone else's.
He stared at the ceiling until sunrise, haunted not by fear—but by clarity.
Days began to feel like borrowed clothes—tight in some places, too loose in others. Tim moved through them like a stranger in his own skin.
He went to work, answered emails, attended meetings where everyone nodded at graphs like they were sacred. But his ears rang with the memory of her voice. "You keep waking up. But you're not awake."
He stopped eating meat. Then sugar. Then anything that came in a packet. He told himself he was cleansing his body for health, but deep down he knew—it was grief. Grief for a world that no longer felt like his own.
Then came the night when he didn't dream.
Not even a flicker of color. Just blackness. Emptiness.
He woke in a panic, tears hot on his cheeks. It felt like death. Like losing her.
For the first time, Tim became afraid of sleep—not because of what he might see, but because of what he might not.
But the next night, the door reopened.
She was waiting for him. She stood at the edge of the floating temple, her back to him, her hair dancing in an unseen wind.
He ran to her.
"I thought I lost you," he said.
She turned, and this time her eyes were different—darker, deeper. There was no comfort in them. Only truth.
"You didn't lose me, Tim. You lost yourself."
He stared at her, breath caught in his throat.
"I want to understand," he said. "Please."
She reached out, touched his chest—not gently, but firmly, like she was knocking.
"You keep trying to fix a dream that's broken. You live by clocks, by names, by rules that don't belong to you. You wear a body, a job, a smile—but none of them are yours. You wake up there. But this..."—she opened her arms to the glowing world around them—"this is where you came to remember."
Tim stepped back, shaken. "Then why let me go back at all?"
"Because you chose to forget."
Silence settled like dust.
And then, soft as a confession, she said:
"You called me love. But I'm not a woman, Tim. I'm you."
He staggered.
She took a step forward, and her form shimmered—becoming him. Same jaw. Same eyes. The child inside him. The elder he might have been. The truth he buried.
"You've been dreaming of yourself all along. You were just too afraid to see how beautiful you really are."
Tim sank to his knees.
The temple pulsed with light. The rivers beneath it ran faster, like veins carrying new blood.
"I'm tired," he whispered.
"Then sleep," she said. "Not to escape. But to come home."
---
Three Days Later
Tim's mother sat by his bed, her hands knotted with worry. His skin was pale. His breath shallow. No signs of injury, no answers from doctors. They said it was some form of coma, though his brain showed signs of intense activity—"like he's dreaming," they told her.
And he was.
He was dreaming wide awake.
---
A Month Later
They buried him beneath a tree on the hill outside town. He had asked for it once, when he was a child. "If I ever die," he had said, "don't put me in the ground like everyone else. Put me where the wind talks to the leaves."
His mother stood there, hollow and howling in her silence.
She touched the headstone.
Timothée Elias Mokoena
1999 – 2024
He Slept to Wake
Her eyes flooded.
And just as her tears fell, a breeze swept across the hilltop. A soft, strange hush filled the air.
And from the old tree above, a single violet-tinted leaf broke loose.
It danced down—not hurried, not lost—until it landed gently on her cheek.
She closed her eyes.
And for a moment, she could feel him.