the dream
Beep beep beep. Eila Miracle woke up to the sound of her alarm going off at six-thirty. Usually, she woke up before the alarm went off, but this morning she felt awfully exhausted. What exhausted… Then it suddenly came to her.
She had just dreamt the most beautiful dream a girl could ever ask for. In her dream, she had been transformed into a brand new person; it was almost too hard to believe it was her. She felt beautiful and elegant with her long, shining dark hair, and a lightly tanned colouring to her glowing skin. She was wearing the most gorgeous of a glittery black dress. Everywhere she went, eyes would follow her. In her dainty hand, she was holding an antique mirror, made of moulded bronze. She gazed down at her own image in her reflecting mirror and it didn’t take her long before she saw a handwritten letter with a wax stamp on her vanity. The letter resembled an invitation card until she read her name on above which said ‘‘Evelyn Rosado’’. When she opened her eyes and realised that it was nothing but a good dream, she was fairly disappointed and wished her own illusion could have gone on forever. Why this dream? she wondered.
She sat up in her bed for a while longer, with glimpses of the dream going over and over again in her mind. It couldn’t be any more than any mere dream, she thought, secretly wishing her dream could come true. For the rest of the day, she lazed around not realising that it was not the usual workday—she had forgotten to switch off her alarm the previous night.
Three days into the New Year, her friend Claire invited Eila to her twenty-fifth birthday party. She could not turn down the only friend she had. They had grown closer and closer over the past years. Often Claire would phone her late at night to have a talk and ask her opinion about things. It gave Eila a sense of need. ‘Thanks, Claire, of course, I will be there and no, I do not have a partner so you did not have to write ‘‘Dear Eila and partner’’ on the invitation,’ said Eila.
Claire giggled. ‘I asked the saviour to send you one for the night so let’s see what happens,’ she chuckled, giving Eila a friendly nudge before carrying on with her work.
During that week, Eila heard all about the preparations for the party and how Claire was looking to invite plenty, and plenty of people-only about hundred of people. By the end of the week, Eila wished the party was already over with and life could return to normal. Although, she did go to a bit of shopping for the special occasion. Having bought herself enough clothes lately, she chose a glamorous, silk scarf instead. Its silky texture complemented her black dress and gold earrings perfectly.
Catching the bus early that afternoon, she hoped to be the first to arrive in order to help Claire set up. When she stepped outside of the bus, cold licked at her face and crept under her clothes, spreading across her skin. With her almost purple lips and gently chattering teeth, she wrapped her thin coat around her tighter. She began to lose her sense of time, had she been out there for only a minute or hours? As the slow minutes drag by she regretted her choice of clothing, it was light and great for an evening party but useless as insulation. The laughing wind crept up to her, following her up the long road she had to walk, hissing at the warmth of her body from soft snow underfoot to the icicles that hung from the railway bridge.
In that wasteland of white, there was nothing for her mind to hang onto. There was no familiar sight, no sound other than the howling, even the street light was instead blinding and no match for the wind. She was left alone with her thoughts as she kept walking. She got reminded by her dream once again; she started to dream and to remember her dreams for the first time in years. And her mind wandered. Evelyn Rosado. I wish I was her. She was everything Eila dreamt to be. I wish people admired me as much as her. She felt unwanted. Feeling unwanted wasn’t exactly a new thing for her. She wished to be good enough for everybody. She felt like ripping apart her skin and searching for a reason why she was not enough for everybody around her. She wished to be the flawless Evelyn Rosado in her dreams. How odd it was to be haunted by someone that was still alive, and that someone was herself. Eila.
She gushed when she arrived at Claire’s door, she was fifteen minutes early to the party. By the time she arrived, her lungs were aching from the cold. She had a longing to see people, but mostly her friend Claire, so she decided to whirl around to see the footsteps people could have made in the snow but there were none.
