paranoia part 1

Trying to sleep was like fighting a shark with one arm: useless. She got up and wandered the small apartment.  It was pitch black outside and there was nothing on TV. 200 channels and there was nothing to watch. She exhaled loudly. It was snowing. Too cold and wet to go outside; besides, who knew what kind of trouble was waiting for her there.  She searched the channels once again and looked over at her bookshelf. Read? Too tired. Her eyes burned and her head pounded. She tried to clear her mind in case anyone was trying to scan her brain and steal thoughts.  She tried to think of a brick wall surrounding her head: like the one in The Village of the Damned; like when Christopher Reeve had blocked his thoughts from the alien kids. The silence was awful. She turned on her computer and played some Nina Simone.  Nina would always calm the storm. Her music was so savage and raw. Stripped down and soothing.  She sang out racism and unending love; somehow she could relate. Even though they were generations apart dealing with two completely different things, the girl could relate to Nina’s sense of isolation and loneliness.

She was young, mid 20s.  Thin, short and paranoid. Her face constantly hidden behind a wall of red curls.  Avoiding eye contact was key; eyes were the windows to the soul.  If no one could look into her eyes, she was safe. Trust was such a luxury; she couldn’t remember the last time she trusted; anything: herself, her surrounding, her reality.  She lived in constant fear.  Agents were everywhere, always lurking in shadows and behind walls. In the air; tiny microscopic entities were hidden in molecules; sometimes she was afraid to breathe.  Night was ideal to do anything – she could hide in the darkness.  Day was too revealing.  She could easily be exposed and found out.  They’d take her away in a black windowless van and no one would ever know.  Not that there was anyone left to care.  She had wandered away from the humanity herd a long time ago.  Agents were shape shifters; they could pretend and morph and she was left defenceless against their power.  It happened so many times that she eventually dropped everyone and vanished. She surrendered herself to the night and to the devastating solitude.  Then it became second nature, being alone. Crowds raised her anxiety. So did cars and people with glasses.  After than it was families: the ultimate cover.  You couldn’t trust families at all because they worked at one giant organism that couldn’t be stopped.  Buses were dangerous because of the bacteria and the viruses, they could transmit things directly to her skin.  The air was full of transmitters. Her apartment always smelled of pine sol and vinegar.  The fumes they emitted killed off anything.  Nothing could survive in her clandestine environment.