It's a parable, as evidenced by all the things happening in it that the rest of the Bible says is impossible.
It's not only all possible, it's all a fact.
Souls do not sleep. Rev 6 and the 5th seal has martyred souls in heaven shouting for revenge, and given robes and told to wait.
Doesn't sound like a slumber party to me.
I don't agree with your take on Paul's comment about being absent from the body and present with the Lord.
2 Cor 5:6,8
6 Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord:
8 We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.
From the interlinear:
v.8 We are confident now and are pleased rather to be absent out of the body and to be at home with the Lord.
Sure sounds like one or the other.
v.6 says believers who are alive on earth (at home in the body) are absent from the Lord.
So it is an either/or situation. We are either alive in our physical bodies, or we are absent from our bodies and at home with the Lord.
So, this passage, and Luke 16 literal account and Rev 6 and the 5th seal, the idea of soul sleep is refuted.
When sleep is used for physical death, it is figurative. The soul is at home with the Lord, which is proved by Rev 6.
Oh, btw, when Jesus told one of the thiefs on the cross that he would be WITH Jesus in Paradise on THAT DAY, was Jesus inviting him to a slumber party or something? Of course not.
The evidence is clear. The only thing that could be said to be sleeping after a believer dies is his/her physical body. Waiting to be resurrected when King Jesus comes back. And we see this in Rev 20:5.