Paranoiac (5 page)

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 into
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.

Journal Entry Eight

I ran to the
lobbys' double doors and flung them open angrily. A blast of heat
hit my face and the humidity instantaneously made my skin feel
sticky with moisture. The sky was painted in twilight colors of
pink, blue and orange. Rows of empty vehicles were parked along the
circular gravel-filled driveway, its’ perimeter lined with large
stones. My eyes frantically darted around the property for the
intruder until they ached. “Where are you?” I yelled out over the
property. Only the noisy army of cicadas answered me
back.

I
marched down the stone path that led to the circular driveway and I
realized my car wasn’t parked alongside any of the others. I didn’t
drive very often so it wasn’t anything too strange but it still
deepened the mystery of how I got here. Slowly I walked up to the
first vehicle I saw, a shiny black SUV. Its' front passenger side
window was shattered. The thick turquoise tinted glass peppered the
gravel beneath the window. A large rock that was pulled from the
yard was sitting in the passenger seat. The seat was covered in
glass and the fabric smudged with dirt. Unfortunately, and to my
dismay, a yellow sticky-note was stuck on top of the stone.
Scrawled in the strangers' charming cursive, the note read,
“There are many like me
but only one will show you the path”.
Of course he wants to play more games, to
send me on more wild goose chases.

He wants to
drive me spiraling into the mouth of madness. I wanted to drop
everything and go home just to spite this coward. Unfortunately, I
was compelled by curiosity and couldn’t keep myself from drifting
towards the next vehicle, a black car, sleek and expensive. The
passenger door was unlocked, so I quietly opened it and climbed in.
The seat was extremely comfortable, the windows were heavily
tinted, and the steering wheel was covered in fine leather. Looking
up I found a yellow sticky-note, peering at me from the rear-view
mirror. I closed my eyes, sighed and tried to ignore it.

I sat with my
eyes closed listening to the cicadas cry. Eventually, I knew, I
would have to open my eyes. I tried to think of other solutions,
wondering of leaving this place, ignoring the shiny yellow notes
and never looking back. Regrettably I know that the moment I open
my eyes, I’d be compelled to look, like seeing a car crash in slow
motion or a bloated corpse floating in a river. I took another deep
breath and embraced the addiction that is my curiosity.

My
eyes opened slowly as I exhaled and I gave in. Staring at the note
I read each syllable out-loud,
“Do you remember her? Will you remember her?”
I shook my head at the
note and stared at the twilight sky. I thought of the name Molly
once again. Every time her name flickered in my head, I felt my
stomach sink. The name Molly conjured an awful regret but I
couldn’t fathom why. I wasn’t ready to face the story behind her
name. It frightened me almost as much as the cellar door. Mollys'
name had been swimming in my head ever since my drunken stupor. I
wasn’t ready to face her yet. Every time I tried to picture her my
mind threw up walls and all I could see was static. I knew she was
important, more important than anything I could imagine. The only
thing I could do was move on to the next overly-expensive vehicle.
I was losing daylight after all and something from within was
nudging me to continue my search.

Something
small and intuitive whispered songs of caution and foreboding about
the night, especially since there would be no moon tonight. Most
people believe that the fiends come up from their dark and dreary
oubliettes on a full moon. They are so wrong. The true lusus
naturae come out on those moonless nights. They are creatures who
don’t need that pale ghastly light to illuminate their path. The
real monsters prefer the pitch black. It is where they tread
through, in thick darkness, licking their lips while watching you
sleep in your cozy beds. They can smell your sweat, your lies and
your blood. These are abominations who play that old game of cat
and mouse. And eventually these apex predators will give into their
primordial urges. They steal your life, leaving you broken and
violated in ways that stain your soul. Neither heaven nor hell will
claim your twisted mangled spirit after that. They'll leave you
cold, stripped and choking on your life’s blood in some unnamed
forest. Your rotting demoralized corpse becomes the only testament
to their dark, brutal, invisible existence. I shuddered remembering
that velveteen laughter from my dreams and moved on.

Journal Entry Nine

The next car
was the same story: expensive, luxurious and unlocked. But unlike
the last car, the interior was stiff and uncomfortable. It smelled
new and looked barely used. One of the things I learned from
growing up with people like my dad was that just because a car
looked new, didn’t mean it was new. Most of those arrogant,
high-class, rich types had a dozen cars worth more than everything
I owned. A lot of them sat unused, scarcely touched and just for
show. People who wasted their money on such pointless trite
aggravated me to no end.

I can recall
so many snobby parties that my father forced me and my mother to
attend. They were rooms full of rich jackasses, standing around
with their noses in the air, speaking nonsense while bragging about
this or that. It was so easy to tell that they all hated each
other. They would stand there, bloated with arrogance, chatting
about why they were better than everyone else or bullshit about
politics. I always tried to stick to my mother while everyone else
was mingling at the party. We would sneak away to explore those
monstrous homes until my father needed to show her off.

I always felt
so betrayed. As much as I thought of my mom as an outsider like me,
she obviously loved the attention. She loved the power my father
bought with his wealth and couldn’t help herself. I could only
imagine how she acted when I wasn’t at those parties. I was usually
the only kid at those stuffy get-togethers. Of course there were
other children at some of the parties but I hated all of them. They
were all just carbon copies of their parents. Their noses were
pointed just as high as their own cookie-cutter parents.

The old stuffy
parties faded away like a bad dream. I sat, white knuckled holding
the steering wheel, with sweat rolling down my brow as I searched
for another note. There was none and I was surprisingly
disappointed. I was losing daylight and wanted to find this
asshole. As I moved on to the next vehicle I was anticipating the
next note, the next clue that would lead me to a treasure trove of
answers. All I wanted was to get to the truth and then run
screaming out of this place. Hell, maybe I’ll burn it down before I
leave.