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trying in vain to imitate the style of Charlotte Perkins Gillman. |
"Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to sreep over him every time!"... I crept until the sun went down and the moon shone through the bars in the window. I was forced back into the pattern. Tomorrow I will be free of this room and its wallpaper forever, and I will have a life of my own. Jane will help me. I have been possessed by the woman in the wall. I am sure of it. I remember nothing since I started to rip off the wallpaper. Now it is almost all gone, and dear John is lying on the floor with the key to the room in his pale hand. He has not stirred for what must be over an hour, and I am getting worried. I will not let her use me again. This time, I will not only capture her, but put an end to her. I held the rope which I had hidden so carefully until sunrise, neither daring to sleep or let go in case she came out again when I am not paying attention. I saw the woman crouching in the tiny amout of wallpaper there was left, staring blankly at me, shaking the pattern at me aggressively. I do not want to help this creature any more. As soon as the woman began to sreep, I srept with her, still holding a rope which I had now made a loop in, falling into unison with her. A few minutes later I felt the woman grope inside my head to make me let go of the rope. I almost did, but a second of clear conscience was enough to slip the rope around her neck and pull as tightly as I could. Jane is killing me. What she does not realise id that she is killing herself as well. I can rest in peace knowing that I tries as hard as I could to escape my dungeon, and succeeded, though only to a certain extent. i missed the breath of wind on my face and the cool splash of water on a summer's day, and I had hoped to feel human sensations again, but now it is beyond me. I no longer have to worry about creeping, or patterns, or being a part of a wall that goes by unnoticed. I am free. She is gone. The woman in the wall, or should I say, the woman who used to be in the wall. I can see my lifeless body next to hers on the floor below me. I am stuck in a neverending sea of pattern, and all I am capable of doing is shaking the heads of past prisoners of that repulsive, lurid yellow wallpaper. |