#paranoia

I must confess this process hasn't exactly been easy for me. Wading through the memories of what happened feels like digging through the rubble of your home after a tornado. You look for anything worth salvaging. And try to ignore the rest. Those three days feel like an exposed nerve in my mind. The wounds, both physical and mental, are still fresh. But this is a process, and my shrink says the best way to heal is by facing the trauma head on. So I force myself to remember it one more time to…

Two Days Before the Harvest Festival Sky’s End Annual Harvest Festival Fall, fun, and tradition! Join us for the annual March to St. Asbeel Stay for the bonfire! - flier in Sky’s End “It’s a church,” Mom said, staring at the stained glass windows of Jesus hanging on the cross. Her narrowed eyes and pursed lips told me she was clearly holding back additional commentary. “It was a church,” I said. “Now it’s a bookstore. My bookstore.” “What?” “I bought it! That was the surprise!”

It started with my friend in Japan. He was a hacker and pirate and always left his computer on, along with AIM and MSN. When he logged out on both, I assumed his computer finally died from overload. It was then I noticed all his posts on our favorite sites were gone. All his accounts, all his videos, all his comments.

I never saw the faces of the men who kidnapped me. I'd been too busy working when the gang of them burst through the front door. Like smoke from an explosion, the kidnappers spread through the entire building. They demanded victims and turned our world upside down searching for them. They didn't speak outside of grunted demands and language so blue that if you could see the words spilling from their mouths, it'd be a dam breaking.

Now, when I think back to the excuses my parents used to make, I feel like an idiot. I remember being twelve years old, standing at the top of the staircase and watching all of the people filing into our basement. Some men wore white masks, some women wore bonnets. But they all had small suitcases, as though there was a bus stop beneath our house. And every one of them looked pale, frightened.

November 1756 Quebec Canadian Wilderness

My room is tiny. Of course, that’s because it was built for efficiency. I don’t know if you’ve ever stayed in a dorm room, or even seen one for that matter, but I can tell you after having lived in one for the past four years: they’re built like stackable sardine containers. My five star, luxury quality, thousands of dollars per semester, individual dorm room measures in at a whopping 9×12 feet! I mean it’s practically a suite in the Hilton! You’re right, sarcasm doesn’t read easily in a diary.

There’s a reason I won’t go to Mockingbird Park, Not just ‘cause it’s creepy, not just ‘cause it’s dark; There are twisty twined trees, there are weeds and neglect, But worse than all that is the “mocking” effect. As you walk the park paths, you’ll hear a faint echo – Footfalls – your own? – in that dim and grim ghetto, Coming closer and closer as if someone’s there... You whirl and see no one, just fog on the air. So you whistle – it whistles. You cough – and it coughs.

The rain carried on as mercilessly as it had the past two weeks which miraculously happened to be just the time when I moved into this dumpster of a town. Me, the 13 year old, Finn Junior Hollis. Watercliff, Bakersfield. Things that shouldn’t be associated at all, right here to shove in the universes face after all. Or rather, this was the universe shoving it into my face as if this is its idea of some cruel joke. First of all, not only was I damned to live in an uneventful place like…

“Jalen, you sell drugs?” “What? No.” “Family sell drugs?” I laughed. “You for real right now?” His stoic face answered for him. “Not that it should matter, but I don’t really have a family. So, no, they aren’t kingpins in the drug game.” “Consider yourself lucky. No family is the way to go. No hassles. No buying gifts for ungrateful nieces and nephews who think just because you own a coupla properties, you’re Diamond Jim Brady. Gives me heartburn just thinkin’ about it.”

“That’s my childhood house.” I wasn’t turning down the street I grew up in. I wasn’t standing near the large oak in the front yard of the house where I’d lost all my baby teeth. I wasn’t sitting inside the kitchen, where, on my fifteenth birthday, I accidentally dropped the cake my mom had baked, which made my family laugh so hard that we shed tears. No. I was holding an oil painting at a Goodwill on the other side of the country. “That can’t be possible,” my husband said.

In 1998 I got a new teaching job in a new town. To save money I moved into a small house that was for rent. My roommate, Claire, was nice enough and the two of us got along easily. I moved in and found my room. While unpacking I came across an old framed photograph. Three men dressed as hospital orderlies were sitting together in the living room of the house. These three men had once lived in the house I was now renting with Claire. I didn't want to throw away the photograph, it didn't…

My therapist suggested I start writing my thoughts down in a journal, saying it will supposedly help me understand and process my emotions, and I’ll get to know myself better as a result. I am sceptical, but what the hell, I’ll give it a shot! I have never kept a journal before, so I have no clue how to start… Uhm, hello, I guess. I’m me and I’m writing this to myself… Do I introduce myself now? To whom? I already know myself, and I highly doubt anyone else is ever going to read this, except my…

This morning, I cleaned out my closet to create space, and I discovered a plastic bin filled with childhood memories. Being sentimental, I removed the bin and began searching through it. The bin mostly contained artwork from my elementary school years, and the majority of them were scribbles or fingerpaintings on bright construction paper. In particular, a crayon drawing of my entire 3rd grade class drew my attention. I have to say that I must have been quite the artist back in the day because…

I’ve been here before. Felt the sweat beating down my brow. That God awful sound. Droning on and on and on. The room is cramped. The people in it are loud. Noisy. “…and you find this watch on the beach. What the watchmaker analogy alludes to is… ” Blah, blah, blah. Philosophy of Religion. Jesus Christ.

3:47 pm. August 4th, 1973. My name is Kevin Matthews. I am at the Matthews Lakeside cabin in Black Rock Park which I received in my dad's will. I'm writing this to document my odd findings of my family's lakehouse.

Everybody knows that if you surf the web long enough, you'll see some pretty sick shit. This is especially true if you intentionally dwell into the dark underbelly of the internet. I've seen quite a few things I don't care to admit to, but one thing that I'll always remember is a site called "normalpornfornormalpeople.com". The first strange thing about the site was that I didn't find it by actually looking for it. It was e-mailed to me by someone I didn't know. The e-mail was as follows:

Please, I don't know what to do. I've tried to tell my wife about this, but she's a science teacher and thanks to my history of practical jokes, she thinks I'm just kidding. There is something stalking me. I don't know what it wants, but almost every night since I started seeing it, it has terrorized me. It doesn't touch me, it doesn't communicate in any sort of way, it just fills me with horror. If what I seem to ramble, please forgive me... I haven't slept in several days.

The bell rang and I lifted myself from my seat and headed out of second period. My back was killing me from sitting in the hard, plastic chair for the past hour and a half; I was ready to get out of there.

For my niece's sixth birthday I bought her a Barbie doll. She loved dolls and stuffed animals, and loved playing pretend with them even more. Whenever I stopped by my sister's house I could always hear my niece playing with her toys, speaking to them as if she was having a wonderful conversation and would sometimes make her dolls talk back.