Ok, this is the beginning of a story i wrote a few days ago:
The nightmare
“Dear fellow student,
Although we don’t have good relations, and I am fully conscious of that fact, I am forced to write to you this letter, for my own reasons. I do not hope to explain the reasons, and besides, the letter is of no matter to them. I only ask something of you, when you return to your room in our dorm to knock on my door, since I have something to say to you. Thank you for your understanding”
I think that this is a good text. It is short, it does not present anything of my situation, and on the other hand it is as much it was possible informative of my intention. Of course it could also be true that this Englishman would not accept to be interested, and will not knock, but in that case I can do nothing. Anyway it is already too late, and despite the intense smell I think that the only thing I can do is to fall asleep, hoping when he returns that I will hear him.
Of course my situation is very bad. It was already too bad, and now I am observing its frightening evolution. I would have wanted too much to simply fall to bed, I am so tired, that that cannot simply happen, to fall asleep without having examined for once more that which happened this night. I do not want to see it again in my dreams, because I am afraid that then perhaps even tomorrow the same sight will be expecting me here, and that is perhaps able to make me entirely insane.
If, at least, this unbearable smell would be toned down for a while! But maybe even that is in reality a proof that all these merely constitute a nightmare, because maybe under different circumstances I would have had already become accustomed to the smell, and it would not make any impression on me. This is a thought, but it is too weak, it is not enough to soothe me, and of course how could it soothe me, it would be as if someone was expecting to calm down by thinking that the blood that he sees flowing out of the wall has a deeper red color than the real one, while however the fact would remain that he is seeing the wall bleeding! Consequently I cannot relax with such thoughts, even if they are correct.
And really do I expect that they are not correct? Do I have inside me even the slightest doubt that I am seeing a nightmare? Is my letter to the Englishman something which shows that I have second thoughts about it? I do not treat it that way. I am of the view that if I could see him I could simply become certain of what must be in effect, of that which it is only logical to be in effect, and besides all that I do believe is in effect. And of course had I not believed it then nothing would be saving me, because then there is a very dark speculation, from which not even the thought of the other, that of which I am certain that it was a nightmare, frees me.
Thus I am restricted to think that the one nightmare replaced the other, which disappeared, vanished again with a jump out of the window. Sometimes in the past hour I had again stood in front of the window, trying there to see that which I was looking for, but without achieving it. But even that, as I am fully aware, could not really calm me down. Do I, after all, doubt that previously I was watching it in front of me? Of course not. Then why I seek to see it again? Perhaps because I hope that as the new nightmare replaced the old, thus the old can again acquire the position of the new, and this time I could welcome it with much happiness, as something which would fill me with peace, no matter how much its meaning would be already so gloomy.
(end of the passage)
It is not evident what is going on from this passage. The story is about a student who tries to understand what happened to him one night in his dorm room. In the previous days he had seen a wolf, as he was sitting near a forest in the edge of the university. Later on that wolf, which already have been argued to have been an apparittion, followed him to his room. That wolf is the first "nightmare". Then, as he is in the room, with the wolf looking at him, pressing its teeth, the door knocks. It is the english student. The narrator is certain that he cannot see the wolf, since it only exists in his mind. However the wolf shortly after his entry begins to howl, and then suddently jumps towards him and the narrator. The narrator has to step to the side violently, something which he immediately regrets since now he can find no way to explain his move to the fellow student, but when he looks at the other student he sees the wolf ontop of him, biting his head violently.
That is the second nightmare, the corpse of the english student, which remains in the room even after the wolf has left. This is why he writes the letter to the student, hoping that he can visit him, thus making it obvious- since he still needs that- that his corpse is merely another apparittion.
I will be very interested in reading what you think of the passage, and the idea for the story.
It will be nice to see you here from time to time, even if it's just a comment or two, or some advice that helps someone else create...
- BTW, I'm curious, which language are you writing in?
