[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY THIRTY-THREE

I’m sitting on the edge of a bed in a hotel room in a wife-beater that clings to my wiry hairy chest. Bony tanned legs stick out from my boxers. As I run a hand through my thinning hair, I see a reflection of myself in the mirror: my hair sticks up in thin tufts of blond waves above a long face with a hounded eyes and a long nose that pinches up narrow at the top and then swings broad and wide at the bottom. My face would probably be described as affable if it did not carry the mark of the paranoiac on it.

I have one thought coursing through my mind. “This is the way out. The only way out,” I say over and over to myself as I stare out the window in front of me where dawn is just breaking.

I rise on two shaky legs, but then steel myself. I dig my black-socked heels into the soft carpeting and then sprint towards the window, crashing through the glass, up and out and then I’m back to that same dream where I am falling

and falling

and falling

and falling.

But as I fall, I’m questioning. Everything seems wrong about this. Implausible. The room was too short for me to have gained any traction. The window too small to have performed my Olympic flip through it. The glass shattered too easily at my touch. None of it is making sense, and I realize that I am remembering their version. The one they want me to believe happened. (marginalia: who are they? I don’t know)

[Deleted]