Paranoiac

CHAPTER 10

My previously deadly hand was frozen in mid-air, her words repeating in my mind like a broken record. "I'm never going away." If this child, if by some insane circumstance, the child standing in front of me was a live projection of myself, what could she possibly gain from torturing me in this way? if it was me, shouldn't she know, better than anyone, the tortures I had endured throughout my whole lifetime? I heard the metallic clattering of the knife on the stone porch before my muscles recognized having released it. I lowered my hand to my side. "What do you want fro..." My question was stopped short as I watched in confusion as the little girl turned her face away from me, now aiming outward onto my small, unkempt lawn.Her facial expression changed dramatically, from a sad, accusatory gaze to a care-free smile. But it looked so deliberate, so genuine, as if she had just slipped back into the precious innocence of childhood, leaving the past two weeks behind. When I turned to face the direction she was, I cried out in shock and disbelief. As i staggered backwards I tripped on the tiered door frame but the tingling and buzzing in my head and all throughout my body numbed the fall. I was no longer looking out onto the grungy streets of my neighborhood but instead, i was watching as a little girl, as I, skipped happily through a field of dandelions. The little girl who had only a few minuted prior stood menacingly in front of me, skipped several feet in front of me, without a care in the world. She didn't notice or see me, even when i stepped directly in front of her. As I soon realized, the girl was leading me towards a large house, made of jagged stone, yet still pleasant and homey. The nausea in my belly returned suddenly as a wave of recognition hit me like a slap in the face. I knew this house, i knew this field and that flower filled basket that she was carrying. I wasn't watching a scene play out, not watching someone else bound up the steps, but watching a memory. My memory. I was racking my brain, trying desperately to remember the event playing out in front of me. As the scene unfolded before me, every detail was so clearly from my life, yet it was as if a giant boulder was blocking my way into the rest of the memory. I knew exactly the moment that the little girl would trip on the stairs and scrape her knee, because I could still feel the stinging sensation of it as if it had occured yesterday. I knew the exact words that would come out of the stout maid's mouth as she scolded me for bringing "weeds" into the house. And when I heard the girl call out excitedly "Mama! Mama I brought you some of those flowers you love! Mama?" The boulder in my mind shattered into a million pieces and I knew exactly what was going to happen as I watched myself, still blissfully ignorant to the horrors to come, push open the door on the top of the stairs. As she did, I shut my eyes. I didn't have to see it, not again at least. The screams that followed were enough to satisfy my doubts.