Brooke: Fever Dreams
May 23, 2008
Inspired by actual events:
——
In a tangle of sweat, blankets, heat, she struggled to lull herself into a quiet sleep. She kept her limbs still, unmoving. She slowed her breathing, and tried to focus on the steady rhythmic pumping of her lungs. Inhaling, exhaling. In and out.
But her mind was wild, suspended madly between worlds. She hovered on the brink of consciousness. As she drifted through these shadowy midlands she struggled to calm her senses–to let the comforting darkness of sleep wash over her.
But she was unable. Waking dreams, unpleasant incarnations of faded television stars and crusty characters from dime novels. She counted them off as they materialized before her. Suddenly she was no longer sleeping for just one, she was sleeping for seven. Seven frantic minds to calm before she could ever rest. They smirked at her, snickered and stared. “You will never sleep,” they mocked, “you are stuck here forever.”
May 23, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Wow. That’s pretty cool! I hate those fever dreams.
Hey, did you read the last scene?
May 23, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Suggestion: Put a space before and after your hyphens. No spaces makes it a compound-word. OSC actually uses two hyphens — like this — to avoid confusion.
May 23, 2008 at 5:51 pm
well traditionally you don’t put spaces after an em dash. But I always DO use two, because otherwise it’s just a hyphen and not an m-dash. but for some reason on OEP it always only looks like one. so then i put three, but it still looks kind of like a compound word. maybe four would do the trick….