The great Gatsby. I n my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ He didn’t say any more but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I’m in- clined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the con- fidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quiver- ing on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.
Amanda woke up again. Her sleep was full of nightmares again. She hadn’t slept a full night in years; not since… the accident; she brushed the thought out of her mind. She knew very well what would happen if she opened that door in her head. There was a little beeping sound that made her turn her head. The glowing yellow light from her alarm clock let her know it was 11pm. She sighted, only 11; another restless night. Amanda went out of bed and into the kitchen to make some tea. While the bubbling noise in the teapot started and the room filled with the sweet smell of berries, she went into the studio to pick up a book. There was no point in staying in bed to await Morfeo’s kiss, not any more. She always decided on which book to read according to the mood: Tolkien, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Collins, Rowling, Tolstoy, Wolf… The list was endless. She really loved reading because it helped her settle when panic took over her. However, something about that night was different. “How odd, it can’t be 12 now” –the thought came to her mind as she heard the beeping again”. It wasn’t the time, or the tea, or the nightmares, that was all the same… she couldn’t either figure it out nor pick a book. The sizzling started and the berries called her from the stove. She went to pour the water in her favorite cup. “This sound is weird” -she thought- “I hear it from the teapot, but yet… it’s weird”. She figured it was just because of her lack of sleep, and didn’t pay a lot of attention as she did with the other sound. With the tea in her hands but without a book, she left the kitchen and headed to the living room. It had windows as big as the walls themselves. She looked out while the ghost-white mountains returned the look. It was ice-cream-cold outside, but she preferred it that way. The Swiss Alps was the perfect place to escape all the memories of the accident. She stared for some time trying to regain sleep and for a minute she felt calm again; her breath even slowed a little. Then, she noticed a sun-like glow in the peak of the mountains. Wait, what? In the middle of the night? “I must be dozing off… that explains the beeping sound speeding up in my ears too”. She started hearing a bee-like whisper, but wasn’t sure if it was just in her head or if it was real. “Of course it’s not real; you’ve been alone for the past ten years, who could be mumbling?” The home-warming tea was apparently having the expected effects. Her eyes were slowly dying as the sun dies behind the horizon every sunset, but all the sounds were intensifying, and she couldn’t quite get off the feeling of this being a different night. The whispering became clearer every minute, but what she heard didn’t make any sense. “We’re losing her!” “Cardiac arrest! Start CPR”. Amanda opened her eyes briefly, or so she thought. She saw the brightest lights she had ever seen, and heard the loudest yelling she had ever heard. Where was she? What was happening? Her mind was playing tricks on her, she was having another nightmare, but she was tired of it. She fought to regain her ice-like mountains and her berries smell back. “No more nightmares, not anymore” –she told herself. Little by little her calmness took over her mind, she was winning! She was finally getting her way and making the nightmares disappear. The sweet smell filled her lungs one more time as she finally dozed off and somewhere, hundreds of miles away from the Alps, Amanda died before the gaze of the ER doctor trying to save her life. Hundreds of miles away Amanda got rid of the nightmares that tormented her for so long. Hundreds of miles away Amanda found peace.
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
Novel
Short Story
Poetry
1984. George Orwell
Fiction
