Abby's Aberrant Short Story Blog

One thing that really confused me in this short story was the whole dream sequence, hallucination, mindscape, what have you, which Farquhar "lived through" in the moments between the board falling away and his neck breaking. The whole sequence of events within the "dream" followed seamlessly from the story's earlier events, so much so that it gave very little indication that anything was out of place. From all indication, Farquhar seemed to think the events within his dream were really happening, yet by the end of the story it is obvious that they were fabrications of his own mind. The whole thing reminds me of the idea of your life flashing before your eyes, except in this case instead of seeing his past, Farquhar was envisioning a possible future, one where he could escape and return to his family rather than dangle from a bridge with a broken neck.  What do you think happened in Peyton's "dream"? Was he dreaming, or experiencing something else e

 He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.” As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside. Chapter 1 Upon re-reading this portion of the story, it struck me that this bit is actually severely foreshadowing the events of Peyton's "dream sequence" later on. The first paragraph recounts step for step the events of his supposed escape, falling in the stream, dodging bullets, etc., etc. In addition, in the second-to-last sentence, the author clarifies that "these thoughts...were flashe