Posts Tagged ‘insanity’

Entry #29 (03/19/97)

Monday, March 21st, 2011 by ahorner

I met Aldon today. I don’t think I like him very much. He tends to stand over me and look down at me with those menacing, muddy-brown eyes. His fur is mangy and patchy, thick in some spots but thin in others. The whiskers on the left side of his face are all shorter than the whiskers on the right. I didn’t want to ask him why. I don’t like his voice. It’s wheezy, raspy, and above all, threatening.

He talks a lot even though I try not to ask him questions. I think he works for the hospital. He told me he was going to keep appearing until I took my medication. I told him I didn’t trust him. He said I shouldn’t. I don’t think he’s a hallucination like the others were. He’s too… scary. I don’t think my brain would create something like Aldon. I don’t think my brain would create something that wants to hurt me.

Aldon doesn’t like for me to keep this journal. He says I’m only encouraging bad habits by writing down the things I think while I’m “in this condition”. He uses those words a lot. He won’t tell me what condition that is, though. I tried asking the nurse about Aldon when he stepped out earlier. She didn’t seem to know who he was. When Aldon got back, he knew I had asked about him. He was angry. He scratched me. The nurse asked later where I got the cuts on my cheek, and I told her I must have scratched myself in my sleep. I’m not going to mention Aldon to her any more. Maybe my brain did create him. Maybe my brain hates me.

He keeps standing by my bed. He seems like he’s waiting for something. I don’t know what it is, unless he’s just waiting for me to go insane. If I have to keep looking at this mangy cat, I don’t think that’s too far off. He makes me uncomfortable, with his crooked smile and crooked gait. Cats shouldn’t walk around on two legs like that. Cats shouldn’t be tall or loom over people. Aldon is a lot of things that a cat shouldn’t be. I want him to go away.

Pretty little dresses

Sunday, February 27th, 2011 by ahorner

Franz liked going through the pile of pretty little dresses in the attic. He liked the silk and satin, the lace and ribbons. He adored the frilly little bonnets, and felt so beautiful when he looked at himself in the antique mirror, flecks of grime only partially obscuring his view of the white stockings pulled tight up around his legs. “You’re such a pretty little girl, Fran,” he chirped merrily to himself.

There were bags under his eyes from weeks of sleepless nights. There were scars along his forearms where tiny fingernails had dug in and left deep furrows. A piece of his earlobe had been bitten off. He had taught that one a lesson, he had. He had spanked her until long after she fell limp on his lap and stopped crying. After all, he had only been trying to play, but they always resisted him. None of the scars or defects changed how pretty he felt when he saw himself in his favorite little blue checkered dress, though. This one had belonged to sweet little Betsy.

He knew they were always laughing at him, making fun of him behind his back. He knew that mothers and fathers knew his secret and would tell their daughters. Their innocent, beautiful little daughters. It made Franz sick to think of how these young minds were being corrupted by the grown-ups they respected and admired. The truth was that growing up did something terrible to them, to all of them, and he just wanted to save the little girls from that fate. So he took them, and told them how pretty they were, and kept them in a room where they would never have to grow up.

He was setting them free, but none of them seemed to appreciate it. This one screamed, that one kicked, another bit and cursed. When he saw an angelic little face twisted in fury and hate, his heart sunk, and he knew he had been too late. If he let her go, she would just betray him to the grown-ups that had already claimed her, so he took his frustrations out on her little body, added her dress to the pile in the attic, and added her ashes to the urn in the cellar. For every thing, a place and a purpose.

Mister Fussy-Britches

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011 by ahorner

She was pretty much done with him. He had been wearing on her nerves for the past three hours, and things were not improving by any stretch of the imagination. Back and forth, back and forth. She watched him pacing with only a vague sense of amusement buried deep beneath her layers of frustration. He would start at one wall, and march to the other like he was in a Big Fucking Hurry™ (the mental capitalization was all hers, but the specific stride and pace belonged to Mister Fussy-Britches himself), only to spin on one heel and repeat the process in the other direction.

The pacing wouldn’t have been so bad, but the muttering made everything so much worse. Words of anger, words of accusation, words of self-righteousness and blame spilled from his lips in a voice too quiet to hear clearly but too loud to ignore. She found that no amount of thinking, hoping or praying could distract her from this endless loop of The Greatest Hits from the Most Important Man in the World. This was the soundtrack of fucking insanity. She wished he were dead.

When he strode up to her and announced that he needed to go outside for a cigarette (as if he expected her to care, or even commiserate), her response was a far-too-enthusiastic, “Of course you do.” This raised his eyebrow, of course. She was struck by how he could remain so completely oblivious to her obvious disinterest for hours on end, but pick up on a single subtle hostile note in her tone. Perhaps he was an idiot savant of social interaction. Or, perhaps, he was simply an idiot. She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally stepped out of the room to feed his addiction.

She had no idea what was happening in the Emergency Room, and prayed that the injuries her sister had sustained in the car crash weren’t too serious. She could leave that in the hands of the doctors and nurses, though. What she couldn’t fathom, however, was this: “Why the fuck did she marry that man?” She didn’t bother to look up at him when he walked back in, the bitter odor of nicotine lingering in the air around him.