Wake Up And Run Novels & Stories

BASH I wake up when Trinity whines beside me. I’m sure she had a bad dream, which is weird because since we sleep together, she never wakes me up because of a nightmare. I rub my half-opened eyes and sit up on our bed. I nudge her shoulder slowly, but she doesn’t budge, her whine gets stronger. “Trinity, wake up, baby,” I say as I continue nudging her shoulders. She jolts awake, throwing the blanket away. Her eyes widen, and her face fills with shock.

Right before I turned off my phone, I'd received one last message from the wedding planner. [Mr. Duggan, all the paperwork has been taken care of.] I replied: [Thank you.] Then I powered it down. Outside, the sea of clouds stretched on like an endless, silent snowfall. I closed my eyes. For the first time, I realized how light it felt—not having to be the steady one. Not having to be praised for being obedient.

But I can't, everything I close my eyes, they are there, always lurking, always staring. I pick up my phone and check the time. It's a little past 7 am. I'm stunned. Four hours of sleep? Now that's a record. I start thinking about how my sleep routine has been this past year and how crazy it has been. I mean, technically, based on how inconsistent it has been, I should have dropped dead from exhaustion long ago, Maybe I'm super human or something. I laugh ruefully, "That's just crazy," I say out loud to myself. My mind still doesn't settle, so I decide to run. Meditation might have been a great option for another person, but I hate how much it makes my mind quiet.

Before I could finish, he cut me off impatiently, "Yeah, work's calling. I have to go." He rushed out the door, and I didn't press him further. However, my doubts grew heavier. Was he really that busy? I followed him, and that was when I saw the happy family scene I had just described. I lifted my numb fingers and hit record, capturing the entire scene in front of me. When I returned home, I locked myself in my room and played the video on repeat. While I lay unconscious, someone else had quietly taken my place. What was the point of waking up at all?

Aletta woke up at the crack of dawn. She hated that her body alarm did not let her sleep through the day since it was Sunday. She tossed and turned in the bed as she waited to see if she would fall asleep. "If you can't fall back asleep you should make use of the early morning" Eunice grumbled beside her pulling the covers over her head. She sat up in bed angrily, She decided to go for a run, she could not sleep so why did she have to lay in bed all morning? After the run, she would make a quick stop for groceries and then make breakfast.

-CHRIS- I have the same routine every day. I wake up at five, go for a run, hit my home gym for an hour, have a black coffee and go to work. Today, for no apparent reason, I woke up late. That's why I was running through the park at 8 in the morning, almost three hours after my usual run. Suddenly, as if my brain had conjured it, I heard someone shouting a name I know very well. "NINA!"

By the third day of winter break, my wolf was climbing the walls of my skull. I woke before dawn without meaning to, body already buzzing, instincts screaming for motion. The house was dark and silent, no pack voices, no shared movement, no thrum of bodies rising together. I lay there for exactly two minutes before giving up and swinging my legs over the side of the bed. Running helped.

When systems wake, they do it in layers. First the hum—the servers in the control room drawing breath. Then the glow—the monitors warming from blue to white. After that, the people follow in their own stutters: coffee on, locks off, voices low. Today, Elysium woke early and on purpose. We were done being prey. We were learning how to hunt ethically.

Then I woke up. My soul had settled back into my body like water poured into an empty vessel trying to adjust the strange yet familiar shape. Even so, my sense eluded me, it felt like I was still stuck in that place of nothingness. Like I was still dead, still trapped by forces unseen and all powerful. Tap. Tap. The first thing to return was sound. The incredibly loud sound of pacing in fact, the slow and steady pacing of predator on a wet stone surface slowly started to fill the emptiness death have left in its wake.

POV Willow I awoke in someone's arms as they were running. I had a hard time opening my eyes but I could feel their arms and the motions of running. I tried to remember where I was and how I fell asleep. Suddenly, it all came roaring back and I pushed whoever was holding me away. He just tightened his hold on me though. "Don't worry, Willow. I'm sorry about scaring you and taking you but trust me. We mean you no harm. We need your help and you need ours, whether you know it yet or not." he said to me.