A Sleeper's Dream Part 2

I suddenly dislike this story, but since I started it, no sense in stopping, right? Give me your harshest reviews.

25 June -Wednesday

Fred proposed! O God, I think I will die of joy. What bliss! Not that I did not expect it. All this courting could not have been pointless. Will write more tomorrow.

Ella, the Happy!

*

26 June -Thursday

As promised, this entry will be longer than the last.

Fred did not come. I asked Horace, who did. He said he knew no Frederick, and he had no brothers. Only sisters.

I screamed.

Am I so repugnant, so undesirable, that even the one who I am so sure is for me, turns out to be imaginary?

I did not believe it at first, as you could well expect. I asked everyone. Nobody had ever heard of Fred.

Perhaps George, Sam, were all imaginary too.

What if all this does not exist? What if my family, my house, my clothes, and even this very table do not exist? What if you do not exist?

What if I do not exist?

If everything really is a dream? If everything is unreal, and all is but a conjured fantasy? What if this world is not truly present, but in the mind’s eye?

Whose mind’s eye?

What is reality?

If this is reality, then what is really here, and what was but hallucination? Could I ever be sure? How? Is life really here? Or is it but an omnipresent question, hanging in the air?

Am I alive?

Elena. Or am I?

*

27 June -Friday

I have decided. If this is a dream, if I am in a reverie, I will awaken myself.

I will kill myself.

It will not be so dramatic, of course. All things considered, I will hang myself. It seems the least painful, though when in a dream, I suppose it does not really matter. I dislike the sight of blood, and I do not believe that my condition, that is to say, whether I am awake or asleep, will affect this… aversion.

And what if I am actually living?

I do not think I will be so sorely missed. Eleanor can get married to that Horace of hers, or Dick, or Joseph. It would be a liberation for her. And if I am living, I would be unfit to live. A mentally ill woman such as I am is a hazard to the normal people. For me, it would be a continuation of the dreams that I insist on living.

Shakespeare did once say of death, “’Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.”

What if Shakespeare never did exist? Oh, the horror!

I will miss you, even if you are but a dream.

Elena.

*

On the last page, three words are written.

No longer dreamt.

The wind slows now, and it closes the last page gently, as if a human hand. Her fury has worn out; as after the storm is the calm, and so the gale is succeeded by a sweet zephyr, kissing the dust as it lands, no longer excited into a unfurling cloud. A curtain of black hair sweeps the air, yet catches no specks of grey in its locks as it lands upon the back of a pretty, silent girl.

She puts down her pen, the author of the last words, and continues her dream.

End.