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WAKE UP, a short story by actung. Date added: 2009-07-06. Times viewed: 1238.

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Intro: Waking up somewhere else forces me to question my sanity.

Is this real? Am I really here typing away on a laptop? For I could be anywhere in the world right now and what I am doing right now is just make believe. I may be inside a dream, one from which I may not properly wake from, maybe I have always been in a dream and everything that I have ever done I never actually done at all, and today may just be the first day in which I have questioned my very own existence.

This morning at 8.30 am, well that was the time on my watch, I awoke on a beach and in the shade of a palm tree, my right hand however had not been in this shade and the blistering heat had sun burnt a dark red colour onto my hand, and a colour which is still on my hand now. Did I dream of waking up under a palm tree? My hand suggests I was at a tropical location only hours ago.

I tried to figure out how I came to wake up under a palm tree but couldn't make any sense of it at all. I clearly was nowhere near my home town of Tallaght. I was wearing a red wine colour shirt, grey shorts and sandals. I remember once having a shirt similar to the one I had on but that would have been maybe seven or eight years ago. Have I travelled back in time? Seven or eight years ago I would have not been anywhere near a tropical location and there was nothing familiar anywhere near me.

I came across a stand where ice cold drinks were on sale, this was my chance to try make some sense out of what was happening. I told the vender that I had a bit of a rough night the night before and that I was now a bit disorientated and asked him if he could tell me where exactly where I was but before he could answer I awoke again and this time I was in a cabin on board a luxury boat.

Maybe waking up under a palm tree was a dream, it couldn't have been, my right hand is still sunburnt. Anyway at least I awoke this time in a bed, a rather large one at that too. A beautiful woman in a bikini walked into the room saying ‘afternoon sleepy head' while picking up a hair brush before going back out on deck. Clearly I had to be dreaming now. I slapped myself in the face and did so, hard enough to knock myself out of the bed and onto the floor and I cut a finger on my already sunburnt hand in the process too.

The time on my watch was now 8.45am so even though I was somehow moving from place to place, time seemed to be moving forward at a straight forward pace. I got dressed and went to try make some sense of what is happening. The woman asked me how my hand was, I didn't know how to respond as something very strange was obviously happening and she seemed to know what was going on so I just replied by saying that I'd live. ‘Your still disorientated right?', 'er yeah', ‘well don't worry, it will all become clear soon enough', and with that, another boat rammed into the one we were on. ‘You've got to wake up now Karl' the woman told me. ‘What?' ‘Wake up'. The boat was rammed again knocking me over but before I could land I awoke in my own bed and the time was 8.53 am.

I am at home, nothing else strange or weird has happened yet, well maybe it's about to, as I look out the window there is a man and a woman outside and standing by the bottom of the garden. it's the man whom was selling the cold drinks on the tropical island and the woman from the boat, they are approaching the front door so maybe I might be about to get some answers, either that or I am about to wake up somewhere else. By the way my right hand is still burnt and has a cut on one finger.........

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