Paranoiac Page 3

  The man I used to call dad, laughed as I tried to crawl away from him. I watched myself pass out before even reaching the stairs. “You deserved it, you little prick!” He slurred out. Walking over to my motionless body, he began nudging me with his foot. “Get up, you little faggot!” He yelled out. I clenched my fist watching as he began his usual tirade of blame. “If you would have been aborted, I wouldn’t be stuck with this!” He kneeled down next to my unconscious self and rolled me on to my side. I watched myself moan in pain while tears, blood and snot drooled from my face. “I could be on some island with a supermodel instead of taking care of your mother!” He drunkenly screamed out. I looked over at my mothers' room as the door creaked open, yellow light pouring into the hallway. She was a walking skeleton, coughing and dragging an IV stand behind her.

  “What’s all of the noise out here coming from?” She asked weakly, struggling to keep her footing.

  Immediately my father stumbled up to her and began to stutter, “No – nothing dear, you should be in bed.” He walked over to her trying to block the view of my whining teenage self. “Helena, you should be resting. You’re too sick to be up,” He said, nudging her to turn around but it was too late. She saw the crumpled, crying boy on the floor and lost her composure.

  “What have you done, Charles?!” She cried out, limping to my sobbing broken body. She looked over at my father and began to cry her eyes out.

  “It was an accident, I was drunk and thought he was a burglar!” He said, defending himself smoothly as if he had already thought of a cover story before striking me down.

  “Call an ambulance, hurry!” She coughed, trying to make her way to me.

  “But… Helena you need to…” My father stuttered, trying to coax her back into the sick room.

  Tears clouded my vision while I watched my mom stumble towards broken glass and bright crimson blood. “Call them now!” She yelled tripping on her IV stand trying to make her way over to me, pulling the IV out of her arm in the process. When she had hit the ground, an audible snap was heard the moment she connected to the floor. Her arm was visibly broken. She pathetically yelped in pain but kept inching towards my moaning unconscious body.

  My father stared in horror at my mothers' injuries. Glass crunched and grinded underneath her as she reached my body. Whimpering, she hugged me trying comfort and nurse my broken body. I moaned unaware of my surroundings while my father quickly pulled out his cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. He was more scared for the safety of his wife, not his son. He scowled at me while giving our address to the operator on the phone.

  My memory slowly began to fade. The room began to whirlwind once again. I remembered flashes of the weeks it took for my recovery, the anger on his face when he was forced to take care of both my mother and me. Slowly I touched my face and felt the scar that will always remind me of the first time he attacked me and it definitely wasn’t the last. Four years after that awful night, I ran away from everything, went to college and started my life anew. The trauma I’d been through fueled my writing, fueled my alcoholism and… everything else.

  Suddenly I remembered where I was. I needed to find out what happened in this damn house so I could close this journal for good and distance myself from these awful memories. The whirlwind continued. I grew dizzier and dizzier, lost and I could hear a faint laughter from a distance. HIS laughter, my pallid brother and his velvet malicious cackling. The memories of my past collided and fused with his laughter, a soundtrack to my madness.

  It felt like all of the time I’ve spent on this earth was happening all at once. I lost hold of my footing, up was down and down was up. There were faces in the ghastly cyclone just like in my dreams. I could see contorted, screaming and wailing faces mixed into the whirlwind. A miasmic darkness shrank around me with the howling of that evil creature still violating my senses. The tendrils of the shadows enclosed around me, constricted my movement and began choking me.

  Soon the screaming and maniacal laughter began to fade. I floated in darkness. It felt as if an eternity was passing by. Gasping for air as each moment passed, my mind was panic stricken with fear and anger.

  All of a sudden I felt hot breath on my ear. He just sat there, breathing while I couldn't, stuck in this darkness. I tried to struggle but felt paralyzed. My entire body tingled with numbness and yet his breathing continued. I sat, entangled in the shadows, begging the fiend to go away. Finally he spoke softly and intimately into my ear, “Don’t worry Isaac, it will all be over soon.” He laughed, amused at my confusion while I grasped for air.

  I feared for my life as I suffocated on the thick, tangible blackness. I imagined that every time I opened my mouth the darkness forced its way into my throat and down into my lungs. My eyes rolled into the back of my head, my thoughts grew muddled and I slipped into unconsciousness.

  This time I dreamt dreams of the past.

  Journal Entry Six

  My eyelids felt heavy, my joints ached with a dull annoying pain and my thoughts were in a haze. I felt numb, my emotions strung out from those dreadful memories. I lazily blinked the sleep from my eyes, trying to make sense of the blur that was my surroundings. My vision was disoriented and foggy as I attempted to feel my way down what seemed to be a narrow passageway. Then, abruptly, my feet collapsed beneath me. I clumsily fell down an endless slope of stairs. Reflexively I jutted out my hands to catch my balance and slammed into a heavy wooden door.

  The palms of my hands jolted with pain as I fell backwards, landing on my ass. “Son of a bitch!” I yelled angrily, rubbing my hands together, trying to ease their pain. “How did I get here?” The last thing I remembered before passing out was searching the kitchen. That and there were those memories I’d rather have kept suppressed and buried in the dark. It was alarming how often this was happening to me. First waking up from that shitty nightmare to find myself trapped in this house, also with no memories of how I got here. Then my mothers' room, all of those mirrors, the torn curtains and the broken glass that shredded my hands. I’m sick and tired of these gaps in my recollection and these Lethean dreams that haunted me to the core of my soul. I write and write in this notebook trying to solve all of these mysteries. I pour my sweat and blood all over these pages yet all I have to show for it is anger, depression and, above all else, endless questions. For every question I answer another takes its place. This cursed house, my cursed life is the Lernaean Hydra of misery and confusion. The only thing that drives me now is to cut down each and every mystery until truth prevails.

  On top of all of this I have a shadow of sorts playing games with me. It is leaving me taunting notes and stealing my belongings. The violent images that flashed through my mind at the thought of catching this shadow put a bitter smile on my face. Never have I felt this much passion for such violent, hateful acts until now. “This house brings out the worst in me,” I said aloud finally pulling myself out of my irrational, self-loathing wretchedness. I slicked back my sweaty hair after standing up and finally realized where I stood.

  The self-pity I was accumulating drained from my thoughts. My breathing grew shallow and every hair on my body was electrified. There, standing tall in front of me was an old, wooden, bolted cellar door with a brass doorknob sporting a nostalgic keyhole. The longer I sat frozen staring at this door, the more I grew terrified. After collecting my broken body I walked backwards up the narrow stairway. Every uneasy step felt like an eternity as I stared unblinkingly at that menacing door. There was no rhyme or reason for this terrorizing anxiety. The only thing I knew was that I needed to get far away from that door or I would implode from this suffocating hysteria.

  I shuddered with every step until I tripped backwards into the laundry room, falling directly on my already sore ass. I sat on the top of the stairs leering down at the ominous door in its' shadowy recess. I couldn’t put my finger on it; why was that door so petrifying? I started to wipe the sweat off of my face and unexpectedly found tears flowing from my eyes. Deciding my emotions were to
o raw to handle another wave of repressed memories and wandering blackouts, I resumed my search.

  Journal Entry Seven

  My psyche started to regain normalcy while standing in the spacious, humid laundry room. The smell of fabric softeners and detergents comforted me. Suddenly, my eyes widened with glee when I saw a large white basket filled to the brim with clean clothes. Towel after towel flew onto the floor as I tossed them behind my back. “Aha!” I yelled with victory finding a clean olive green t-shirt. As I all but tore off the disgusting sweat, scotch and blood stained shirt, I felt happy. It was the first time since waking up here that happiness flowed into my sullen heart. I knew it wouldn’t last but it greatly lifted my mood. Dressed for success, I left the stuffy laundry room and made my way down the short corridor that lead to the living room.

  The corridor was dim and dreary. The only source of light was from the living room at the end of the hall. I noticed a faint smell of household cleaners as I blindly felt my way down the corridor, using the stucco wall as a guide. The squeaking of my boots on the hardwood floor broke the silence of the hallway. With each echoing step toward the living room, the scent of cleaning products grew stronger. Light began to pour into the passageway as I knelt down and inspected a carved scratch that led into the den. I sighed at the damage knowing the floor would have to either be replaced or sanded down. “This isn’t my house. Why would I care what happens to its’ gaudy floors?” I muttered out-loud. Although, the longer I was here the more this notion began to make sense: if I forgot how I got here, maybe the simplest solution is that I live here. “Not in a million years,” I sighed, dramatically refusing to believe I could ever call this place my home, not after all the abuse that I endured in this mansion and so many like it. Now that I think of it, I really do despise every house my family and I shared. I mused over the idea of burning down each and every house while enjoying a scrumptious picnic. A little mulled wine and the heat of blazing homes on my face would leave me with a broad smile. Pulling myself from my thoughts, I focused on reaching the living room. I inspected the scratches on the floor for a moment longer and picked myself up to continue down the corridor.

  As I walked across the threshold I was stunned by the chaos before me. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought a bomb went off inside of the giant parlor. The black leather furniture, including the couch and reclining chairs, were tossed over onto their sides. All of the cushions were missing along with the giant Oriental rug that used to be at the center of the room.

  An antique coffee table was pulverized and sitting on top of a neat pile of broken glass. Bits of splintered wood, torn fabrics, and other miscellaneous trash were heaped into the corners of the room. Each brick red wall had several empty bronzed, frames hanging half hazardly in suspended animation.

  It was so odd seeing these empty, decorative frames. Who would have taken the time to dismantle each frame, only to put them back on the wall empty and soulless? Would my sheepish stalker really do something like this? What was the point of destroying a house that I loathed? As I filled my journal with questions, staring at the destruction in the room I realized something. All of the collective heaps of debris were in a sort of organized chaos. Even though the room was ripped to shreds everything was swept up and in neat stacked piles. Aside from the pieces of trash here and there around the baseboards, everything was clean. It was so clean that the smell of cleaners was overwhelming, as if someone opened a dozen bottles of bleach and dumped them all over the furniture and floors. Who could have done all of this? It must have been recent judging by the pungent odor that soaked into my nostrils.

  From across the room I stared at the white marble fireplace and noticed something stuck to the wall in the center of an empty frame. I angrily walked over to the still-warm fireplace, a few dull glowing embers illuminated still, within the crackling, charred wood. I placed my hands on the warm, marble mantle and looked up to see a small yellow note stuck to the wall. The note was smack-dab in the middle of a giant bronze frame where a mirror used to be. I tore the note off of the wall and quickly read my stalkers' beautiful penmanship, ‘Illusion is the first of all pleasures.’ I repeatedly read the quote famously coined by Oscar Wilde and originally written by Voltaire in his satirical poem La Pucelle d’Orléans. I tried to make sense of the quote and how it related to the room or anything else for that matter. Staring at the empty frame where the mirror once sat, I thought once again about my mother and her countless creepy mirrors that littered this fatuous mansion.

  The mirror atop the mantle used to eerily reflect the entire room. I remember staring into that mirror as a child and imagining it as a gateway to another world, just as my mother had taught me; a world opposite to the terrible things I had to suffer. It would be a parallel dimension, where my parents and life were perfect. I used to daydream, sitting on my bed, wishing everything were different. Looking back on it now, if that mirror truly did reflect another world that was opposite ours, I probably wouldn’t even exist.

  Like so many children in this world, I was an accident. My parents, under the pressures of their own conservative families decided to keep me. Every day since then, dad treated me and my mother like rubbish, unable to accept the only thing he truly hated, himself. I wish I could have been there to see him read the book I published after graduating college. It was a book that hit bestseller lists across the globe; a little fiction about a young boy terrorized by his belligerent, alcoholic father who eventually kills his mother. Not unlike my juvenile self, the young boy in my novel travels through mirrors. Each one took him into another world where he could escape the torment. Eventually the young protagonist commits suicide to escape his father once and for all.

  Every terrible act of mental or physical violence the main character endured was ripped straight from my life and my dad knew it. As soon as the book became famous he would constantly call me and every time I answered he would hang up. Finally, one evening after coming back home from a book signing I saw the tiny pulsing light coming from my answering machine. The moment I played back the message I could tell he was drunk, “Hey boy… You were da one who killed yer mudder! You can’t lie to me, Isaaaaac! You should thanks me to the shuccess of yer little book. If it wasn’t fer my great parunting you’d be a failure like the resht!” The rest of is garbled insults could barely be understood. I was so furious that he tried to take credit for the success of my book with his hellish parenting. Even after he read my novel he still blamed me for my moms' death. I realized the man would never understand that my novel was my secret biography. It was a list and a recounting of all the events I withstood. I was the boy traveling through these mirrors into a parallel, perfect world to escape the rampage of his father. My book was only one of the worlds that I daydreamed about, a dimension where my father won and I ended my own life to escape it all.

  Then finally it dawned on me, maybe my stalker did know me after all. I felt like an idiot for not realizing the connection between the quote right away. Not only had I used this quote in my book but it was a poetic metaphor relating to my childhood. I turned around putting my back to the mantle and stared at the organized destruction in the den. “Illusion is the first of all pleasures,” I said aloud. I have lived my entire life in an illusion, not just my childhood. I survived as a kid in those made up worlds, only to later thrive in them as a writer after running away from home. Living in an illusion is my greatest pleasure, that and any type of hard liquor I can wrap myself around.

  I walked into the center of the room and kicked at some of the debris and glass. This stranger either knows me personally or has read my books. Either way the more I search for answers the more eerie this all becomes. Again, I felt an angry fury burning within. The more I was taunted and teased, the shorter my fuse became. “Are you so unoriginal that you have to use quotes to taunt me now!?” I yelled out at my lurker. Almost as soon as I finished screaming I heard a faint laughter coming from the adjacent lobby.

  Running in
to the lobby, I slid on the slick, wet floor. “Get back here, you coward!” I screamed out. I tried to grab the end table to stabilize myself, knocking over a vase of flowers in the process. Another bout of hysterical, velvet laughter, echoed throughout the lobby answered me. I spun around violently trying to catch my shadow in the act. The laughter was unnervingly similar to that of the monster in my dreams. I shuddered at the thought of the wraith-like creature that haunted me.

  Quietly, I searched the lobby trying to sneak up on the thieving bully. The lobby was untouched and clean compared to the living room. All of the lights were on, including those that illuminated the front yard and entrance to the house. The floor shined with a reflective white and grey marble. The wood trim on the walls were of a dark, red oak and the walls were painted eggshell white.

  It was a different feel compared to that of the other rooms I had seen so far. Yet still it was dissimilar from the nasty green paint from the past. The squeaking of my rubber soles echoed in the lobby as I tried to find the intruder. “Stop running away from me, you bastard!” I bellowed out. My voice echoed for a few moments as I sat rigid, listening for any sign of movement or life. When nothing came, my shoulders slumped in defeat yet my quiet fury rose. I could feel my blood boiling as my fists curled. I felt like I could explode taking this piss poor house with me! Seeing red, I could feel my pulse, beating like drums in my temples. The world was a blur and all I could think of was how stupid I felt. It was as if everyone in the world was pointing and laughing at my idiocy, in on some colossal joke, all at my expense. My eyes shot daggers at the simple decorative furniture splayed around the lobby. I stomped towards a waist level oak table and reached out towards the vase sitting on top of it. It was filled with stunning flowers and other floral dressings. My anger was screaming, “Do it! Smash it! Destroy it!” but before I could act I heard a loud eruption of glass from the front of the house.