A Literary Journal For
Aspring Young Writers

paranoia

They say the best way to know whether or not you’re dreaming is by pinching yourself. Yet lately, nothing hurts; maybe my body has grown too weak.
I used to feel paranoia, like the air unfurling down my throat. It doesn’t affect me the way it used to anymore, it's everyone else who changes.

They tell me my eyebags have grown so heavy they weigh my eyes down, that now I don’t look any of them in the eyes. Which is a silly thing for my subconscious to say.

“Why do you never talk to me anymore?” my mother asks. She looks almost normal except for her mole being on the wrong side.

“Because you’re not real,” I reply. She doesn’t react. She already knew what I was going to say.

She’s not real.

Sometimes, I walk past my sister in the kitchen, and stare as she’ll pass with a hurried “good morning,”. Nothing ever seems irregular, but maybe later she’ll push back her hair and reveal a missing ear.

Sometimes I don’t eat, I'm sure when I wake up no time will have passed and I will eat all I want. Until then though I wait for something to really wake me. Like a pinch on my skin, a kick to my leg, the cries of my younger brother begging me to just for once believe him when he says he’s real.

Still, his voice remains a distant sound, like a tune I once memorized but could no longer recite. So, despite sometimes lingering and watching as he begs on his knees with tears equivalent to the waves that bring down buildings, I ultimately still turn away. He isn’t real, just my imagination, just another dream.