Asleep (Completed)

Epilogue

The tall, dark haired man gelled his hair into place. He chuckled as one hair refused to lay flat.
"Aw, come on! We gotta look good for the funeral!" The man exclaimed loudly and a bit angrily.
He was an impatient man clearly. He just wanted to get everything over with. Everyone had been talking about Rebecca.
"They killed her after only seven days?"
"She was such a sweet girl..."
"How did it feel to kill her?"
The man swallowed a lump of regret. Every minute of his life he was faced with the knowledge that he killed a superstar. Rebecca was famous for her scientific breakthrough.
He wasn't surprised though. What was surprising about having dreams? As a doctor, he knew it wasn't possible, but it still made him angry when he heard the gasps.
His wife walked into his room and kissed him on the cheek. She was a pretty woman.
She was small and weak looking. He always took advantage of how light she was and how unwilling she was to put up a fight. Even though he usually took advantage of her, he was still insanely in love with her. She had long blonde hair that was curled perfectly by heating. She had large injected lips that were covered in a nude shade of pink. She wore a skimpy black dress from her earlier occupation and would change into a different dress for the funeral.
The man sighed deeply as he waited for his wife to change. She wore another black dress but it was completely plain and covered her body up well.
"Lauren? Are you ready now? We're late already, the taxi has been out for ten minutes!"
The woman rolled her eyes and gave up on redoing her left eye makeup.
"Alright fine, but don't blame me if people make fun of my makeup!" she replied angrily.
The tall man motioned for his wife to walk through the doorway of their bathroom and when she was done he also passed through. They walked down the stairs of their beautiful house and stood at the front door to put on their shoes.
"Burt, why are we even going to the funeral? All you did was pull the plug when they told you to," his wife spoke loudly and with great confidence.
The man simply shrugged, and continued to put on his fancy black shoes.
His wife had a point though. He had no idea why he was invited but he felt an obligation to go when he was invited.
When the married couple left their elegant house they walked to their taxi and made their way to the funeral.
The man watch as the city went by while they drove. He felt confused about Rebecca. He didn't know who she was really. All he knew was what happened to her. She was a famous politician. She always talked about goals and aspiration in the form of dreams.
Even her campaign was: "dreams can become reality".
Everyone loved her and voted for her for mayor. She had always won her elections.
The man remembered when she first started her career. He could recall how she started from just being a city council member to being mayor for the first time. He had always wanted her to be president eventually. She did works for their tiny city.
When they approached the funeral building they both cleared their throats and sighed. This would be a sad experience because they both rarely went to funerals.
When they got out of their taxi they looked around at the building. It wasn't tall but it was wide. There was a sort of gloomy feeling to the building and it made the couple immediately look at each other with regret.
"Well, let's go..." the young lady spoke.
Her hair rolled down from her scalp all the way down to her back. She had obviously modified hair. No one could achieve perfect hair like hers without a curling wand, a colossal amount of hairspray, and bobby pins.
Burt nodded, his jaws grinding nervously. He knew people would stare at him for being the one to pull the plug, even though it wasn't his choice.
When he got in he showed his invitation and was let into the main room. It was large and filled with rows of seats. He felt nervous. He didn't want to meet Rebecca's family anymore. He thought it was over.
A few of Rebecca's friends ran around the room slowly in more of a fast jog.They seemed to be having fun at her funeral.
Well, the funeral ceremony would start soon.
Burt was joyous that he didn't have to have a speech done. He wasn't good at speeches. He would always mess up and his voice would crack in an embarrassing way.
The couple was greeted by Rebecca's family first. He smiled and said hello as well as his wife but they didn't talk much. He just said sorry and then shrugged away. His wife stayed to talk though. She loved talking to others and was definitely a lot more social than Burt.
The man looked around at the room carefully. There wasn't much inside except for chairs and a small podium at the end of the room. There were flowers in tall stands on the podium but otherwise the room was just filled with people.
People approached Burt with questions on how it happened. It was a quite simple story, really. All he did was tell them that Rebecca got shot and was put into a coma. He would tell them that she had a lot of brain activity during her sleep which was odd but they decided to eventually end her suffering since it was going nowhere.
Eventually he got tired of all of the chatting and walked down to the chairs to save a seat for him and his wife. He wasn't very worried about seating, he just wanted to relax.
After a while of just sitting there more people arrived and it was almost time for the ceremony. Some girl approached him and sat down next to him, the opposite side of where his wife would.
"It's a shame Rebecca had to go. Her parents should've kept her alive more," the young female mumbled softly.
Burt raised an eyebrow in confusion. Why was the lady talking to him? Was it because she wanted to flirt with him or because she was bored? Either way, he was happy that she didn't ask why he killed Rebecca.
The grown man had to think about what to say to the fair haired woman. She seemed important in a way and he wanted to impress her.
He cleared his throat to speak.
"She wouldn't have lived in the end. She was living in a vegetative state."
The woman seemed confused at first, but then nodded in understanding.
"I just thought that maybe there was a chance. I mean, a bullet wound isn't that bad..."
The woman seemed to be looking for any reason that Rebecca should still be alive. It seemed trivial to Burt. He didn't understand what the point of thinking like that was.
"Are you a friend of Rebecca's or are you just someone they knew like me?" he asked.
Burt wanted to change the subject because it wasn't in his best interest to upset someone with science. The woman seemed nice and he just didn't want to be rude to her like that.
"I was one of her fellow politicians. I'm an environmentalist on the city council. She was a planning commissioner, so we didn't get to talk a lot, but when we did we did, we talked very much. I would even consider us good friends," she woman explained and seemed to get over her own words.
Burt nodded and awkwardly looked away. He didn't know how to answer that really.
Everyone started sitting down and his wife sat down next to him. Everyone prepared for the ceremony.
The father of Rebecca got up. He looked intimidating to most.
"Thank you all for coming. Rebecca was an amazing daughter for me so she was very difficult to let go. I'm happy to see you all here to know I wasn't the only one..." he spoke clearly and walked off the podium.
They started doing a quick tradition where they cover the face of Rebecca in her coffin. She was in a blue coffin which was weird but that was also the family's decision.
When they were done, the speeches started. Burt wasn't very excited about these speeches at all because he hated crying. He hated sadness and regret and he knew someone would talk about him in one of their speeches.
The mother came up first for this.
"My daughter was a very successful woman. She made me proud with everything she did. When she was little she would even make the prettiest drawings in preschool! She never let me down and the fact that a bullet stopped her was very heart breaking. She always said that nothing were ever to stop her. She was right for a while after college. She was able to be apart of city council and be mayor but she couldn't make it to state representative. In fact, her dream was to be president. Everyone knew she could do it! She could be first female president! But s criminal had to stop her. I think the main idea to this speech is that although she died young she never disappointed me..."
That was a pretty odd speech to the married couple. At the end they both looked at each other like everyone else was crazy. Everyone was already tearing up in the audience. Burt could point out three people who were clearly burst into tears. Surprisingly, the woman next to him wasn't crying. She didn't seem upset over the career portion of the speech.
Then, the father came up again.
"Becky meant everything to me. Let me tell you all a story. When she was little, she would always have nightmares about a man that followed her around..."
Burt suddenly felt sick from that last sentence. It was as if the world was telling him that he was that man.
"She never stopped having these nightmares I'm sure but whenever she told me about them I would always stay home from doing some work and help her out. I would make her hot chocolate and her favorite pancakes. I'm sure she still has these horrible nightmares but she grew out of the tradition eventually. But one day, a few weeks before she died..."
The father paused to cry a bit.
"One day, she came over and hugged me. She told me 'dad, I had one of those nightmares again and I need you'. She told me that the dream was about the man trying to kill her. I told her it would never happen and I made her a nice breakfast. I didn't work that day, just to be with her again..."
At that point, everyone was crying. The married couple still weren't crying though. They didn't even have this emotional attachment to Rebecca so this wasn't even that depressing for them.
The girl next to Burt was crying slightly at that long story but didn't seem to be completely wrecked yet.
Finally, Rebecca's brother was up.
"Sorry if this gets long but I have a very meaningful thing to tell you all. So, Becky was my sister. As all sibling relationships are, we weren't the closest. We would always make fun of each other and hit each other a lot. It was for fun, though, I promise. When we got older, I would make fun of Becky for dating the nerd of the school or the idiot of the school. She would always make fun of me for never having a girlfriend in general..."
Everyone laughed then. Burt didn't know what the brother's status was now but it would've been even funnier to him if the brother was still single.
"I think what I'm trying to get to is that we loved each other but always liked to have some fun. In college we started actually caring about each other and it was great. We would both go to the same house parties and get drunk. I still had to get the taxi for us which sucked because I was always broke... Anyways, I have a real story. So, when we were in high school we were very different students. Becky took a lot of math and science whereas I took a lot of english and arts. We usually never saw each other after school because whenever I had something she didn't and same the other way too. We did have one day where we saw each other, though. Every Tuesday, after I had woodshop and she had debate club, we went home together. I remember leaving the school and going to our spot to wait. I also remember there being some big bullies there. They beat me up pretty bad for hitting on their girlfriend or whatever and left me there with a huge bruise on my chest. When becky came she carried me home like a baby and patch me up. I never expected her to do it but she did. AND she made me dinner that night and helped with my homework. She was so helpful and amazing and I don't know what I'll do without her. I know that the city needs her and everyone is sad that she's gone."
Everyone clapped for that speech. The married couple weren't crying but they understood now. They saw the sadness around everyone. It was like people had bubbles of sadness.
When the speeches were done from the family someone shouted that Burt should do a speech explaining what had happened in details. Burt went on to tell everyone that he didn't prepare anything but they made him go up either way.
He cleared his throat and sighed. He walked up to the podium and when he stood in front of everyone he sighed.
"So basically, Rebecca was shot in the right side of her chest while doing a speech. The one who shot her was arrested and is now in jail for attempted murder. At first, when Rebecca was in a coma, everything was going normally. Then, we found out that her brain was still in an awake state and she had a lot of brain activity going on. It was a scientific breakthrough in a way because the only explanation was that she was having dreams. This is, or was, impossible because humans cannot dream in a vegetative state but it did happen for her. We weren't able to deduce what really was going on in her mind though so it could've been anything. It could've been the brain's attempt to keep her alive for all I know."
Immediately after finishing, Burt jumped off the podium and walked back to his wife and the other woman, still sitting in between them.
Everyone seemed to be whispering to their neighbor and Burt sighed. He said everything correctly so why were others still talking about it? He didn't do anything wrong. In fact, he did the right thing.
When the rest of the speeches were over, Burt sighed and stood up along with his wife. They were about to leave when the woman stopped them.
"I'm glad about the talk we had. A lot of people are angry at you for killing Rebecca but I know it wasn't you who decided to. People just choose to blame you..."
It was nice for Burt to hear that someone understood but it still wasn't comforting.
Burt said goodbye to the woman and was on his way out. He was glad the whole thing was over for him. People would probably stay for the burying and whatnot but he didn't want to. It was pretty pointless for him.
The couple got back into their taxi and drove back home. When they got home the put on normal clothes (sweatpants and a big shirt) and prepared to go to bed. They had a light snack, potato chips to be exact, and got ready for bed.
They watched some tv about cats. He didn't know cats couldn't see red...
Then, his wife switched the channel to one about dreams. That made Burt miserable and he felt like groaning but he didn't want to upset Lauren. He listened through the whole show and smiled brightly the whole time. It was a fake smile though. He didn't want to watch tv.
"Can we watch something else?" He asked but still smiled.
He didn't want to watch tv actually but he didn't want to upset her. He would much rather watch a different show.
His wife turned off the tv and looked over at Burt.
"Sweety, are you upset because of the funeral?" She asked but seemed very caring.
"I just feel kind of guilty now. Remember those dreams that the man talked about? I got a weird feeling during his eulogy. I think maybe it was me..."
"Burt, you can not be serious!" She chuckled and then nudged him happily.
He laughed along but didn't feel that way inside. He felt like he was guilty either way. He would be haunted by dreams that night, nightmares about killing an innocent woman. He never wanted it to be that way but he had nasty feelings and it seemed so fitting.
He gave up on trying to be happy eventually. Even when the couple kissed, they both frowned and refused to be happy.
Burt kept on thinking that maybe he was the man that appeared in Rebecca's dreams.
He was keep thinking like that until proved otherwise.
* * *
Here's a message to people:
Life is not the way it seems. You can pretend to be happy and try and smile but when you kill someone the life comes out of you as well. Killing Rebecca was fine at first but apparently it wasn't fine for others. People don't understand how much pain I feel now. I'm rambling on but I just wanted to say that Rebecca wasn't normal. She had dreams of me before dying and I know it. I don't know how or why but I know it. Later, when I look back at her brain patterns I see that there were sudden spikes of life. I believe these to be snaps back into reality. I believe that she could've made it and it saddens me everyday. I find it hard to work everyday even. I come in knowing that I could've saved her if I really tried. That's the pain of being a doctor. You can save people but you can't... It's hard to explain but whatever.
-Burt