paradox Page #4

"A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is a man who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent." ~Jerome Lawrence There's something wrong. Elisa wakes up in a foggy detachment from reality, with no idea what's going on. From there it only gets worse. It's almost as if she just, broke.

• Fiction
• Horror
• Short story
• Drama

								


    I reached over the branch and tried to pull my mom back through her window. With much struggle and desperation, I finally succeeded. Her body fell into the driver seat limply, folding in on itself in a way that shouldn't be humanly possible. 

    I screamed until my voice was hoarser, I screamed as the sirens approached, I screamed as we were lifted from the wreckage. 

    While the EMTs attached me to different machines, I sat high above in a tree branch, crying as they zipped the black body bag and loaded it into the ambulance.
 The thing they don't tell you about therapy is that you're extremely self aware the entire time. You sit in the hard leather chair, stiff as a board, as you recount the horrors you've somehow lived through. 

    I watched the therapist's facade fade, the stoic expression they schooled morph into a twisted horror. The disgust and anguish flashing through their eyes as if they were the one who went through it, instead of me. 

    After I described everything to the therapist, who's name I couldn't remember, told me she was concerned about a psychotic break. 

    I told her about the visions and the fog, how it started a few days ago and didn't lessen as the time passed.

    "I'm worried about a psychotic break, but if this began before the incidents, there's something deeper going on. I'm going to refer you to a colleague that's very reputable." She pushed up her thick rimmed glasses and wrote something down on a notepad. 

    Her face had smoothed over and her apathetic expression ha  returned. 

     

    The colleague of hers was an old man with white hair and gray glasses. He was a psychiatrist, which I later found out was a step above a psychologist. 

    I felt special. 

    The psychiatrist told me that he agreed with the therapist, but wanted to run a few tests to see if he was correct. 

    Like I was a hypothesis for his middle school science fair project.

    "Tell me about the accident again, not what happened, but what it felt like. What you felt like, what you heard and saw." He pressed.

    I was lifted from the car by an EMT, who asked if I was able to walk up the hill. I nodded, unable to form words. 

    I trudged up the hill, stumbling and scraping my hands on the rocks. There were leaves and dirt mixed with  blood drying on my face and in my hair. 

    The EMTs did a checkup, the machines beeping in my ear. The whooshing of the blood pressure cuff and the whir of the breathing machine they were trying to use on my mom.

    'It's not worth it.' I thought bitterly. 'She's dead.' 

    It was as if I couldn't stop the thoughts from coming, but I couldn't voice them either. There was a thickness in my throat that prevented my words from coming out, but a filterless racetrack for my thoughts.

    "Kid?" The EMT waved his hand in front of my face. I snapped out of my reverie and looked at him with unfocused eyes. 

    "Are you in any immediate pain?" His voice was muted, as if he were talking through a filter. 

    I shook my head no, which was true. I felt nothing, as if there was a static filled white space in my body. I felt detached from everything. The thoughts running through my mind ceased, and there was just silence.

    My eyes were unfocused, unseeing. I saw myself sitting in the ambulance, the white bandage wrapped around my matted hair, my ripped t-shirt clinging to my torso. 

    I saw the concerned looks the  medical workers casted my way. But most importantly, I saw the far gone look on my face as I watched them pack my mother into the back of an ambulance, without really seeing anything at all. 

    When I left with a white prescription and a new diagnosis, I wondered if she knew how this would end.

I walked home from the psychiatry clinic, each step heavier than the next. The medical staff deemed me physically uninjured enough to go home, so here I was. 

    The ten minute walk felt like an hour, every time I crossed the street I saw shadows of men in the windows of shops. Cars driving through intersections just fine were crashing together in a fiery accident.

    Each hallucination faded within seconds showing me that everything was fine,  but my heart still raced and my pulse still plummeted. I shivered and felt chills running down my back in the ninety degree heat. 

    I finally made it home, opening the front door and dropping to the floor.  

    I closed my eyes, pressing my palms against my eyelids as if I could push the dizzy fog away.

    When I opened them, I saw my dad standing above me. He reached out a hand to help me up, but before I could take it I felt the heaviness in my chest again. There was a bright flash of white, then my vision cleared a bit as I watched in horror. 

    An invisible object penetrated my father's chest, blood gushing out of it at an insane speed. 

    There was a loud ringing in my ears, a high pitched beep that was abnormally elongated.

    I stood there, frozen, as blood streamed from his chest. His knees buckled and he folded onto the floor. His hand grasping at his chest, eyes wide, and mouth agape. 

    He mouthed strangled garble but no words came out. I cried for the nth time as blood ran down my fingertips. 

    How is this happening? Why is this happening? I thought desperately. 

    I looked around, trying to see something, anything. 

    There, laying in a pool of blood that was growing bigger and bigger, was a butcher knife. Covered in blood and chunks that are supposed to stay inside of the body. 

    I covered my mouth with a blood covered hand as if I could mute the hysteric sobs.

    I sat net to him, unable to touch him. It was as if I became paralyzed every time I tried. 

    I reached my hand back out to try and cover his wound, but my hand hovered above his chest, as if there was some invisible barrier stopping me from touching him. 

    I heard the front door creak open and whipped my head up, just in time t see Bexley and her boyfriend, Steven, standing in the foyer with their jaws dropped.

    "What happened?" Bexley asked. Her tone was monotonous, shock taking over her fight or flight reflex. 

    "I don't know!" I heaved out each word between sobs.

    "I wish I knew!" I clenched my eyes shut, trying to remember what happened between the white flash and me coming to. 

    "How did this happen? Why was it with you each time?" Bexley's voice raised. Steven, who was on the phone with presumably the 911 operator, grabbed her arm in a soothing manner. 

     She yanked her arm from his grasp and stormed towards me. I flinched back as she approached me, hiding my face behind my red-stained hands.

    "This! Is! All! Your! Fault!" She screamed, swinging her fists with each word. Each impact to my face, gut, anything she could reach really, sent a burning flame to the area. I cried out with each punch, begging her to stop. 

								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes