Once there was a man who couldn't get up until Four O'clock.
He tried and tried, but mostly he slept and slept.
No matter what he did, when he opened his eyes it would be Four O'clock.
Exactly.
Every time he woke up at Four O'clock he would be disoriented, exhausted and cranky.
He would rub the sleep off his eyes for one minute and then fall back to sleep.
One minute exactly.
In spite.
Then the next day would come and he'd wake up at Four O'clock again and do the same thing.
Sometimes, in that minute he was awake he would try to get out of bed but it was always much too hard and the minute was wasted.
One time he actually did get out of bed but then when his minute was up he fell asleep on the floor.
The next day he tried moving some more but got his directions confused and fell back on the bed.
Then when he got up at Four O'clock the next day he tried to move again but just couldn't do it anymore.
He aged very slowly. It seemed to him his sleep was more of a reality than the one minute he had awake.
He had a lot of dreams. He didn't really cherish or enjoy the one minute he had awake and after a while it became more of a burden than anything else.
After a while he stopped trying to move and kept his eyes shut. He would feel himself waking up but would keep his eyes shut until his one minute awake was over.
But somehow this made the minute seem even longer.
The minute he kept his eyes closed waiting anxiously for it to be over seemed like exactly 9 years.
This began to bother him more and more.
Finally he couldn't take it any more. One day when he woke up at Four O'clock he opened his eyes again.
This time it took him a while to clear out all the sand and goop that had collected there.
He opened his eyes and looked around and he didn't close them until Four O'clock the next day.
At Four O'clock the next day he closed them again and went to sleep.
And he never opened his eyes again.
And he never woke up for a minute at Four O'clock either.
His eyes remained closed and he slept. And his sleep went on forever, which felt like exactly 9 years.
Sometimes his soul would wake up at Four O'clock and wander around for about a minute or so but it didn't matter anymore anyway because he was dead.
And being dead, there was no reason for him to get up at Four O'clock, or at any other time for that matter.
Because when you're dead you don't need to get up at all.
Unless your soul gets achy and restless or remembers something from its previous life.
Then it might get up sometimes at Four O'clock and wander.
And some souls sometimes get so restless and creaky they get up at Four O'clock and don't go to sleep again for years.
This can be a problem.
Try to remember to get some rest but don't overdo it.
Try to get up for at least an hour every day or you might end up like the Four O'clock man.
The Four O'clock man is okay, he's dead, but his soul is pretty achy and creaky.
His soul gets up and moves around for hours and days because the Four O'clock man's soul is restless.
It's rested too much already, it says. It doesn't want to rest for all eternity as well.
And because his soul cannot rest, the Four O'clock man cannot sleep.
So he's not really okay because he's not really happy.
And since he can never sleep, he can never dream.
And because he cannot dream he cannot exist.
And that's something of a problem.
And that's not really too good after all.