English Class Shenanigans

Disordered and Disarrayed: Paranoia

I've based all of these vignettes off of psychological disorders. Comment which one you think this represents :D

I know that they're there. I can feel their eyes on the back of my neck, I can see them through my bedroom window. They are always with me, no matter what I do. Believe me, I've tried. I've filed restraining orders, but they don't help and they haven't accepted my complaints since the fifth one. I think they have my phone number written down, because every time I call it's the same woman that answers and she always says the same thing. "Who is it this time? The bogeyman or a killer marionette?"

Then her line goes silent and I know she's muted herself to laugh. They always laugh at me. "No," I beg. "They're after me. Again. It's the same four people. I promise I'm not lying to you." She stays silent for a bit longer before taking the phone off of mute.

"Sir, I'm telling you, we've checked, and there is no reason for you to believe that there is anyone after you."

"You have to try harder!" I slammed the phone onto the ground, sending plastic and metal pieces flying across the room. They say I'm crazy, but they couldn't be more wrong.

I know that they're there. Their eyes glint in the light of my fireplace as they stand three feet behind me. They just stand there. I have never seen them move. One time, one of them smiled. The warm light of the fire flickering across their face chilled my soul. They were there even when I lived with my mother. She never saw them, either, but she told me she did.

I know that she never saw them, despite the fact that she would hold me to her chest and cradle me until I stopped crying. Despite the fact that I heard her talking to a doctor once about her "concerns". When I left she cried because I couldn't live on my own, she said. In her mind, I wasn't fit to live on my own, but I had to run from them.

As I was walking away, she said I was crazy, but she couldn't be more wrong.

Heather left too. She walked right out the door, yelling about how she had never met someone so delusional in her entire life. We were together for four months, two weeks, five days, two hours, 30 minutes, and 13 seconds, and I have never been more in love with someone in my life. When I was around her, I could ignore the prying eyes. I could focus on something other than the impending doom that was to come soon. She knew about them, she knew that I was being followed, and she helped me move apartments twice before saying that she couldn't take it anymore. Or, at least, she told me she understood that they were there. But when she left, she said I was crazy.

She couldn't be more wrong

I only ever saw them in mirrors, standing behind me or peering into the windows, and they were gone by the time that I turned around. There was a woman and two men. I didn't know their names, where they came from, or- most importantly- why they came for me.

The men were always together. They wore glasses that obscured their eyes and never moved. No- they had to move. Otherwise how could they leave before I caught them? They just stared blankly into whatever room I found myself in. The woman, however, was always by herself, and would sometimes wave at me as if she was an old friend on her way in for dinner. Her eyes were a piercing blue that made my skin crawl.

The last straw was when the three of them stood outside my front window. They smiled widely with their too-white teeth and stared at me with their too-blue eyes or too-dark glasses. They were still standing there by the time I had grabbed the butcher knife. Blood coated my hands with a sticky wine-colored layer of grime and their bodies lay on my front porch.

"911 what's your emergency?" the woman answered, her voice kind and comforting. It was a different woman than usual.

"I had to kill them. They wouldn't go away, they wouldn't stop following me, and no one would help. Please help me."

The bodies were gone when they arrived, and they called me crazy. But they couldn't be more wrong.