DJ, I'm sorry that this won't be long, but I really thought that Clark's nightmare was absolutely horrible. It was brilliantly written, too. It was the absolutely worst kind of nightmare, the kind that is, in the beginning at least, not too absurd to be obviously untrue. It could have happened. Okay, I don't believe in ghosts, but I don't necessarily know that when I'm dreaming. And the idea that Lana called out to Clark, that she called for him to come to his bedroom, but then she had locked the door to his bedroom... very, very psychologically true. It brilliantly reflected the relationship they had had, except that the locked door doesn't symbolize Lana's reluctance at intimacy with Clark (because there had been no such reluctance on her part), but rather it symbolizes her rejection of him and accusation of him now, afterwards. He was the one who had turned her down and played a cruel game with her. The first chance he got, he spent the night with another woman.
Clark's horror at hearing Lana call his name, his horror at realizing she is calling him from his own bedroom, his horror at realizing that the door is locked, his horror at seeing that yes, indeed, Lana is back and sitting in his bed, his horror at hearing her plead desperately with him to help her, his horror at seeing that yes, indeed, Lana is a ghost, a corpse, bloodied and broken from the crash, and sitting here in his bed, pleading with him to help her and accusing him of killing her by rejecting her....
Oh, DJ, what a horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible nightmare. This is indeed the kind of nightmare that you don't wake up from, when you wake up. It stays with you and gnaws at you, and it fills you with so much guilt that you won't ever know how to handle it. How to live with yourself. How to live with the woman who loves you? How to live with Lois?
Yes, I did say I wanted to read a sequel, too. Because when I read your first version of this, I thought that Clark should be more guilty and uncomfortable about Lana's death than he seemed to be. Well, now you've made him guilty with a vengeance, and now this is the question. Will Clark's guilt at Lana's death cause him to break another woman, too? Will his bad conscience about Lana make him cruel to Lois, too?
Well. Very interesting. Yes, indeed, DJ, I'm really, really interested in seeing where you will be taking this.
Ann
