Horror Show

Horror Show

 Theater lights dim. Surrounded by strangers, I sit as if alone.
On screen, in a darkened room, a fumbling hand picks up a bedside phone.

“Hello?”
“We have to wake them! Get them up!” says a frantic voice.
“Who... who is this?” the man answers groggily.
“Dr. Sacks, it’s me, Leonard.”
“Come quick, before it’s too late.”
“Are you okay?” asks Dr. Sacks.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m alive! So alive! I’ve never been more alive. But we need to start right away—make them see.”
“Alright. Yeah. It’ll take me a minute, but I’m on my way.”

As Dr. Sacks sits on the shore, Leonard wades into the waters of the Hudson and scrambles up a rock. Standing with outstretched arms, he begins to yell:
"Wake UP!"

A plane flies overhead.
Leonard looks up, grins, and begins to spin.
“Look at this! Look! How miraculous it all is! Don’t you see it?”
“Yes, Leonard, I know,” Dr. Sacks replies, watching.

"Wake up," Leonard pleads—to speeding cars, to silent office buildings, to the entire sleeping city.

Tears streak down my cheeks.
Leonard—and all the patients Dr. Sacks cares for—have been locked in catatonia for a quarter of a century.

I know the feeling of unfeeling.
To protect myself, I wrapped myself in my own kind of catatonia for a decade.
But when he gives them the miracle drug, L-Dopa, the patients emerge—as if from a deep, deathless sleep.
Just as I did, naturally, after my mother died.
I, too, awoke to a world transformed, full of mystery and awe.

The real tragedy is yet to come.

The miracle unravels.
The drug makes the patients unstable, paranoid.
L-Dopa must be terminated—and they slip back into their cages, imprisoned inside their own bodies, locked away from life and the living.

Goosebumps race over my skin. Sweat merge with tears streaking down my face.

I never want to go back there, to that stagnant, dead place.

My shoulders shake. My chest heaves.
I sob at the horror that befalls them—a horror that could be mine.

Because the true terror is not death.
It’s being asleep while you’re still alive.