Three Stories About Paranoia
9 April 2007 | Gerry | Stories
- The Lock
The last time I checked the front door deadbolt it was locked. Wasn’t it? It was just five minutes ago, but I thought it was locked. Definitely locked. Could I have unlocked it when I touched it to confirm its lockedness? Could a finger’s feather brush do that? Maybe. Now I’m not sure.
Maybe it was one of the kids? Those jokers. One of them might have unlocked it just to make me crazy. Sure they were only five and two, but just last week my brother Bob’s eight-year-old son logged on to his, Bob’s, PayPal account and sent two hundred dollars to a Nigerian scammer to claim nonexistent lottery winnings. Who’s to say my own five year old couldn’t unlock a door at midnight just to mess with me? He’s so much smarter than my brother’s kid.
Could the lock simply unlock itself? If it’s a sentient lock, alive and aware, and it’s in revolt, like the house boy apes in that Palent of the Apes prequel! Sentient Kwiksets rule the future! Christ, just one more thing to worry about.
What if someone picked it while I was in the bathroom and is now hiding until I go to bed, when he’ll murder me in my sleep? i guess I better make some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.
- Cake Batter Can Kill You
Marcy couldn’t believe the sight: husband Mark and daughter Lacy licking batter-dipped wooden spoons, laughing like children. Only one of them had the right to do that.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Marcy reached for the spoons but her loved ones pulled them away.
“What’s it look like we’re doing?” Mark said. “We’re eating what’s left of the cake batter.”
“But it has raw eggs in it! Are you two crazy?”
“No. I’ve eaten cake batter every time I’ve ever made a cake. My mom used to let me eat it, and I’m letting Lacy eat it.”
“But you could get salmonella poisoning. You could die.”
“True, but it tastes so good.” He scraped the spoon against the inside of the bowl and licked it clean. Lacy did the same. “Besides, you could die from something today.”
“What a horrible thing to say!”
“Marcy, saying something aloud doesn’t make it come true. Watch. I wish my wife wasn’t a nervous twitchy woman.”
“I don’t twitch, Mark.”
“But you’re still nervous.”
Lacy stomped out of the kitchen door into the backyard, where she stepped on a bee, went into anaphylactic shock, and died before Mark and Lacy had a chance to wipe the batter from the corners of their mouths.
And boy did Mark feel awful about that.
- I’m Only Afraid When I’m Alone in the Dark
It’s a childhood fear. Darcy would admit it if it ever came up in conversation, but because she’s forty-two, divorced, and the mother of three young boys with active imaginations, even when it does come up in conversation she can’t talk about it.
She’s afraid of God. But only in the dark.
In daytime, her fear disappeared under the sanitizing effect of sunlight. When the sun set, her fear crept from the newly formed shadows and sat beside her, occasionally touching he nose with it’s omnipotent hand. The fear is analagous to someone awakedned in the middle of the night by a sourceless noise and immediately, if briefly, fearing a boogeyman crouching in the closet, inching open the door to minimize the hinge’s squeak, creeping from beneath the dirty clothes, intent on murder. Unlike that equally groundless fear, hers did not lift as the fog of sleep burned away. Throughout the night, eyes open, limbs trembling, she feared God.
Oddly enough, she no longer believed in God, just feared Him. It was the Catholic in her struggling to be reborn. She fought against it, and only succeeded during the day.
Saddest of all, she had no one to pray to to relieve her nocturnal misery.