Just Because You're Paranoid...

'JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID"



The third day after the pill bottle ran dry. Zoe checked and rechecked her doors for the eighth time in an hour. 

Since she was seventeen, she had been cautioned to never let the bottle run dry.  Her mother made sure to check the bottle, but she had not returned for two days.

She tried to call her mother at work when the bottle spilled accidently, to no avail.  Now the utilities were cut off.

Had she at least one more pill, she could have perhaps recalled their purpose.  The rocking in her darkened closet, seeing demons wishing to consume her piecemeal.

Bewilderment morphed into the manic paranoia on that third day.  She paced around her apartment constantly, her mind fixed on the staggering demons outside that periodically caught her eye.

Into the kitchen...they're outside the window!

Out into the living room...they're in the yard!

Look through the keyhole...one's looking back at me!

"Take a shower," her mother told her when she was especially manic.

Into the tub!  The safe tub, the blessed tub.  No one hurts Zoe in the tub!  No one can unlock five locks to get to her tub!

Somehow lucidity came enough to tun on the faucet.  The tepid stream ran dry after a few minutes.

The sound of broken glass out front shattered the safety of her tub. 

Zoe heard shuffling footsteps accompanied by the clatter of a pill bottle.  There were jerky slaps at her door.  She heard only the pills, the salvation.

"Mama!"  She leapt toward the sound of the pills, threw open the locks and reached out for the normalcy denied her. 

Then she was backed into a tub by the stench of her rotting mother. 

No longer were the pills a salvation.  They were doom.