Paranoiac (4 page)

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 too 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.