“You know - dreams sort of fritter away along some narrow blurred margin of existence for ever and ever. Flitters of image, to which we return from time to time when we’re not awake and ready to dream.”
The man speaking had been a complete stranger only hours before, but Eloise now listened with growing, if guarded, respect.
“So, the dreams carry on eternally, all dreams, everybody’s dreams?”
Her voice piped plaintively. She’d never been one for making a mark. She was a sounding-board that merely sounded out external realities, with only the gentlest touches upon the tiller of conscious communication.
“Yes, dear lady, eternally and infinitely. It is true also to say that we return to our own shapes of self that interact between the jiggling channels of dream. When we’re not in residence, the shapes simply sort of carry on without us. Yes, they can indeed exist without us, those selves we think we are when we dream. We just re-inhabit them when we think we are dreaming. In the meantime, they own the bit of our consciousness that never wakes.”
“How do you know, when most dreams are forgotten?”
“Quite simple, dear lady. Think for a moment. Vulnerable and beautiful creatures such as yourself can only find sufficient illogic in a dream to bring you to talk with hard old strangers like me. So, even now, you must be drifting along that rippling course which itself travels onward over the weedflows of the dreambed...”
To his horror, Eloise’s face suddenly took on a new strange hard look itself, as she felt the tiller spring to life in her dead hand.
(Penny Dreadful 1999)
