When a strange sound—heard simultaneously by every person on Earth—leaves humanity unable to sleep, modern civilization begins to collapse with terrifying speed. In the days that follow, governments fail, infrastructure disintegrates, and the line between waking life and madness dissolves.

At the center of the unraveling is Trace, a war veteran struggling to repair his fractured marriage and reconnect with his young daughter while managing the psychic scars of interrogation work overseas. As sleeplessness deepens into hallucination, Trace becomes haunted by Alvin, a sadistic prisoner from his past who may be memory, delusion, or something far worse.

Part psychological descent, part apocalyptic nightmare, The Wake is a literary sci-fi novella about trauma, guilt, and the terrifying possibility that the end of the world may begin inside the human mind.