PARANOIA

It’s past midnight and I’m still awake.

I know this scene. I’ve seen it before.

In the shape of a shadow,

standing behind me, whispering to me.

I can never make out the words.

I just know it is coming for me,

and I can’t stop it.

The brakes echo in the pharmacy’s old parking lot as Sam stops the car. It’s a cold October night, and there aren’t many cars around. Every kid who was out, dressed in their Halloween costumes, asking for candies to every soul who crossed their way, was already home and the streets were now abandoned. Sam takes the keys out and looks at Brooke sitting next to her. She’s still very quiet. Her head is leaned against the window and her eyes are lost somewhere else.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” Sam asks her.

Brooke shakes her head, still not looking away from the window.

Sam stares at Brooke’s face, studying the black circles under her pale, puffy eyes, her smeared eyeliner, and the small cut in her lower lip, barely hidden under a ridiculous amount of red lipstick. It stopped bleeding a couple of minutes ago, but the wound was still fresh.

The ghost of a tear is still visible on her cheeks.

“Please, it’d probably be safer if you don’t stay alone in the car –”

“I’ll be fine,” Brooke says all of the sudden. Her voice is scratchy and soft. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Sam takes a deep breath and bites her lip, knowing exactly where this conversation is going.

“Look, I don’t want to start another fight. You know I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this night to end up like this. I know it’s hard for you to talk about your family, and I shouldn’t have brought it up during the party, but I’m… I’m sorry, okay? Could you just please come with me?”

Brooke says nothing. Sam calls her name, extending her arm, trying to touch Brooke’s shoulder and get a response from her, but she stops midair.

“Alright. Let’s have it your way. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. I’ll just get your medicine and then we will go home.”

Sam takes her purse, leaving only her phone and the car keys in case Brooke needs them, and then she gets out of the car.

Brooke stares at Sam as she disappears behind the old pharmacy doors, one of those second-hand stores that sell medicine for crazy people like her next to cans of cat food. The only place they could find open on their way home. She tried to convince Sam that she didn’t need the medicine, that she was fine, but Sam kept insisting.

Brooke checks her watch, it’s 12:45 a.m. They should’ve been home an hour ago if only she and Sam hadn’t spent almost an entire hour yelling at each other at a stranger’s house.

Brooke takes a deep breath, pushing the memory away. She massages her neck and leans her head back on the seat, closing her eyes and concentrating on her breathing just like her therapist told her. She breathes in and out, in and out in a series of four. Her heartbeat slows down, and she feels the sleep taking over when suddenly, the alert of a text message calls her attention.

Brooke turns to her side, finding Sam’s phone and the car keys abandoned in the seat. She takes both. Sam’s phone screen shows a photo of them in front of Machu Picchu. Brooke smiles with melancholy. That was a year ago, before she was diagnosed. She couldn’t say their life was perfect back then, they already knew something was wrong, but those were simpler days, and she would never say it out loud, but the truth is she missed those days.

Brooke clicks on the message on the screen. It’s an unknown number, but Brooke guesses it is from someone at the party because the message says: It was so good to meet you, Sam, I’m sorry you had to leave early.

Brooke shakes her head, sinking in the guilt. She’s about to put the phone away when another text comes in: If you ever want to talk again or take a break from Brooke, you can always call me.

Brooke frowns, reading the text again, and again, and again. Trying to make sense out if. She knew better than to let a simple text stick to her mind, but it was too late because she could not keep her eyes out of the phone. Why would Sam need to take a break from her? Who was even this person?

Brooke looks back to the pharmacy. She remembers the words Sam told her before leaving the car, she repeats them in her head, trying to push her doubts away, but then she thinks about the words Sam yelled at her during the party. She thinks about their discussion, and the way Sam slapped her on the face, and her head starts to hurt again.

Brooke looks away. Holding her head with one hand, and it’s only then that she realizes there’s another voice joining her thoughts. A soft whisper coming from behind her. A voice she doesn’t recognize, but that feels very familiar.

Brooke looks out of the window, but there’s no one there. The only sound outside comes from the wind blowing leaves in the ground, and a flickering streetlamp. Brooke stares at the light as it flickers and flickers until it finally dies, burying her in deep darkness.

As an instinct, Brooke locks every single door. She takes a deep breath and looks back at Sam’s phone. She begins to write a text: Who are you?

Before she can send it, the phone battery dies.

She quickly looks around the car for a charger cord. She looks desperately inside her purse, throwing everything out of it. A small box of disinfecting wipes, a hand sanitizer, and a bag of makeup fly through the air as Brooke digs inside it. When she doesn’t find anything, she throws the purse away with an angry yell.

She immediately starts searching in the car’s glove box, finding a couple of papers and a pocketknife. She takes the last one, looking at it confused, not sure of what it is doing there. She puts it next to her and keeps on searching until she finds the charger cord.

Without thinking it twice, she turns on the car and connects the phone to the radio. Her eyes are locked impatiently on the phone as she waits for the screen to come back to life.

She checks her clock, it’s 12:47 a.m. Sam will be back soon. Unsuccessfully, Brooke tries to turn on the phone, but she ends up throwing herself back to her seat in defeat. All she can do right now is wait, and she knows how cruel waiting can be.

She holds the pocketknife again, playing with it in her hands, watching the blade dancing between her fingers. She turns on the radio, stopping at a station that’s playing one of her favorite pop songs, an extremely joyful melody with a sad lyric, but Brooke didn’t find it sad at all. She would always say it was just misunderstood.

She closes her eyes and begins to hum the song, still holding on to the pocketknife. She listens carefully, distracting her mind away from Sam’s phone, away from the darkness, and away from everything. A smile appears on her face as she sings along, but soon, the music fades. The heavy drums and the guitar melt with the sound of a whispering voice.

She can’t recognize whose voice it is, or what it says. She tries to listen to the song, repeat its word, but she’s paralyzed. She can only listen to the whisper in the back, getting closer and closer to her. Whatever it was, she knew she should be afraid of it.

The disturbing cry of a car alarm takes Brooke away from her trance. She opens her eyes to find the lights of the car next to her blinking rapidly. Suddenly, Brooke feels a warm pain extending over her hands, and she looks down to find her hands unconsciously pressed against the pocketknife’s blade.

“Great,” she whispers with sarcasm as she quickly reaches for the packet of disinfecting wipes she threw away.

She presses the wipe against her hand, holding a scream of pain as the soap enters her skin. She finishes up cleaning her wound, tying the wipe around her hand. She starts cleaning the blood from the blade, and then from her sweater. The wipe scrapes against the sweater’s fabric, but despite her efforts, the blood doesn’t go away. It just expands, like the whisper inside her mind.

Brooke is breathing heavily now, and her eyes fill up with tears. She looks at Sam’s phone, still dead, and back to the radio. She throws away the wipes and changes the station. She changes from an orchestra concert to a country song, and then to the loud scream of a heavy metal band, but in each song the whisper is there, getting louder and louder. She stops at the news channel and turns the volume all the way up, but the whisper is still there.

She wipes away a tear, leaving a red mark of blood on her face as she does. She tries to scream but her throat is dry. She can’t breathe anymore.

Brooke jumps to the sound of someone hitting her window. She turns to find a group of drunk teenagers wearing monster masks laughing outside her car. They jump to the car that had its alarm roaring through the entire parking lot, and they drive away.

Now Brooke is completely alone, and she’s not sure whether to feel relieved or worried about it. She can hear the whisper clearly coming from behind her seat. Brooke looks through the rear-view mirror and she finds the dark silhouette of a person, a shadow, sitting behind her.

“No, no… please, not this again,” she murmurs, tears falling down her face.

In the middle of Brooke’s panic attack, Sam’s phone comes back to life, and a text message shines through the screen, but Brooke doesn’t bother to look at it. She takes the phone and throws it inside the car’s glove box. She quickly turns off the radio and takes the keys out. She hides her face inside her hoodie, and pulls her knees to her chest, holding the pocketknife in front of her with trembling hands.

The heavy beat of her heart bumps through her ears until she cannot hear the whisper anymore. After a minute, when the whisper is completely gone, Brooke slowly lifts her head, and it’s then when she feels it, a shadow leaning against her ear.

“Look behind you,” it whispers, and Brooke turns back, but there’s no one there.

With a quick jump, Brooke tries to pull the door open. She takes the keys to unlock it, and she steps outside. It is extremely dark and cold outside, Brooke can’t find the shadow anywhere, but she knows it is there. It has to be there.

Unsure of where to go, she turns to the pharmacy. She looks at her watch, it is 12:50 a.m. Sam is probably still inside.

Brooke runs toward the pharmacy, crossing the big crystal doors, but as soon as she steps in, she gets blinded by the bright white lights. She stumbles back with an arm in front of her.

Some people walk toward her, but all she sees are long, blurry faces, saying words she can’t understand. Slowly, she starts to walk away from them until she’s out of the pharmacy again.

Adjusting her eyes back to the darkness of the parking lot, Brooke can barely see where she’s going. She walks in circles until she slips against a bunch of trash bags and falls, hitting her face on the ground.

She can hear the whisper again, calling out her name. She tries to runway from it, but her arms and legs are so weak she cannot stand up, so instead she crawls on the cold and dirty ground. She crawls until her back crashes against a wall, and she stays there, trapped.

She looks up and finds the shadow walking toward her.

“Please make it stop, make it stop,” she begs to the sky as if this was just a bad dream she could just escape from.

Her breath is gone, and she can’t stop crying. The shadow gets closer and closer until it is a gigantic figure standing in front of her. She wants to run but she can’t move, she just closes her eyes and in a final call of despair, she screams.

-

Sam kneels down next to Brooke, who’s screaming and fighting against her. She tries to hold her hands and calm her down, but she’s pushing her away.

“Brooke! Brooke, please stop! It’s me, Sam. Please, Brooke!”

Sam takes Brooke by the face, forcing her to look up. Brooke finally opens her eyes, looking at Sam. There’s no shadow, no whisper, just Sam’s bright brown eyes. Brooke stops fighting. She relaxes her arms, and it’s only then that she realizes how much they are hurting. Brooke looks down to the bag of medicines hanging from Sam’s wrist, and then around to the parking lot, realizing where she is and what just happened.

Ashamed, she starts crying again, not out of fear but out of sadness. She let it happen again. She let paranoia take control. She leans in Sam’s shoulder, and Sam holds her in her arms, letting Brooke’s quiet tears fall on her. They stay there for a minute, and then Sam helps Brooke up.

Back in the car, Brooke isn’t crying anymore, but she’s back to being quiet. Sam stares at Brooke’s wound in her hand and the blood in her sweater.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asks.

Brooke shakes her head, without looking at Sam.

“Are you sure? You know that if it was another attack, you can tell me, I…”

But Brooke isn’t listening to her anymore. She has her head leaned against the window. Her eyes lost somewhere else.

Sam takes a deep breath. Giving up. She takes the keys and starts the engine. She looks around the car for her phone, finally finding it inside the glove box. Brooke looks at Sam’s every move, how she looks at the screen, and then puts the phone away without doing anything else.

“Let’s go home,” she says, driving them away from the pharmacy.

Brooke stays in her seat, very quiet. At times her eyes will dance between Sam and Sam’s phone. Waiting for her to take it, but Sam keeps driving in silence.

Brooke looks through the rear-view window once again, the shadow is gone, but she can still feel it close. After all, it never leaves. It just hides and waits. It takes different shapes and colors, but it never leaves.

Brooke leans back to the window. She watches as the city disappears behind them, and she closes her eyes, waiting for the dreadful whisper of paranoia to come back.