Paranoia

Nothing is quite the same

It had been a bad day at work.

I got in the car and drove home as quickly as I could, but I couldn't help feeling dreadfully drowsy. I dismissed it as a result of a long and laborious day. Perhaps I should have gone to bed earlier last night.
It began to rain, so I turned on the windscreen wipers. The rhythmic humming of the wipers gave me a headache. Left. Right. Left. Right.
I turned the wipers off. I was almost home anyway. The rain wouldn't have obscured my vision too much.

I was about to pull into the drive when my tyre suddenly hit something.
Thud.
'That didn't sound good' I thought to myself as I reversed again. I peered out of my side window to see that it wasn't actually my drive at all. I blinked at the front windscreen. I was sure it had been. Must have been the rain. That was what the wipers were meant to prevent. My drive was right next to this one, so I had no problem pulling into it. I took my keys and climbed out the car, locking it behind me, and made my way up to the front door. It had stopped raining now. The ground looked dry, but I didn't pay any attention to that at first. I was eager to get inside and warm up.

When I got in my wife came to meet me.
"Bad day at work?" She asked when she saw me. I gave a dismissive nod, kicking off my shoes and hanging my jacket up. I left the keys on the counter.

I went up to my study and started working almost at once. I couldn't even remember what I was working on. I rubbed my eyes. My head was starting to hurt again. I blamed it on the soft buzzing sound of the heating. I turned the heating off and got back to work.

I had been typing furiously for at least a couple of hours. I looked at the clock. Midnight.
I rubbed my eyes. I must've been working for longer than I'd thought. I shut down my computer and went to bed. I had forgotten to eat but I wasn't hungry. I thought it was odd that my wife hadn't come up and reminded me to eat or asked why I was still working after so many hours. Usually she would come up and keep me company or ask if I wanted a drink.

I got into bed and tried to sleep. Again, that terrible headache keeping me awake. I could hear a dog barking. I went downstairs and got the keys out of my jacket pocket. I opened the door and the dog ran out. I didn't think to wait, I just shut the door again, half asleep, put the keys back in my jacket pocket and went back to bed.

When I woke up in the morning it was late. I panicked, for I was at least an hour late for work anyway. Why hadn't my alarm gone off? Maybe I'd knocked it somehow and turned it off. Maybe I'd already heard it and gone back to sleep. I got up, got ready for work and went downstairs.
I went to get my keys from my jacket pocket. Both pockets were empty. I glimpsed the keys lying idly on the counter. Of course, that's where I had left them when I got home from work last night. But then what about in the night? I'd got up to let the dog out. I didn't have a dog. Next door had a dog, maybe that's what I'd heard. But then why had it stopped when I'd opened the door?
If the keys were still on the counter maybe I'd never got up in the first place. I was tired. I hadn't slept or eaten much in the last 24 hours. I must have dreamt it all. Not unusual for me to have strange dreams. I paid no attention.

I went to my car and drove down to the office. When I got there it was shut. It was Saturday. How had I not realised that? My car's dashboard shows the date, so I must have seen it a number of times on my way there. Again, I was very tired. I decided I should just go back home and go to bed for a bit to try catch up on lost sleep.

When I got in my wife came to meet me.
"Bad day at work?" She asked me. I felt like I'd heard that before. That wasn't weird though, she always came to meet me, always asked about my day. I'd probably heard it a million times before. I shrugged.
"Yeah, it's been weird." I told her about my co-worker who'd been fired. She said she'd heard about that from next door. Then I remembered I hadn't been to work that day. I looked at the clock. It was six o'clock. I blinked at it a couple of times. I was sure I hadn't been to work that day, for it was Saturday. It hadn't taken me seven hours to drive to the office and back.
"Everything alright?" My wife asked me.
I smiled at her. "Yeah, I'm just a little tired."

My head started to hurt again. The ticking of the clock was very loud. I went over and took it off the wall. I had a watch anyway, and my phone told the time. I didn't need the noisy wall clock.
My wife came in briefly to tell me she was going out. I heard the door slam and assumed she'd gone. Aaron from work phoned me later.
"How's Emma doing?" He asked.
"Yeah, she's alright. She's out at the moment actually." I said.
"Oh, okay. See you later then."
I put the phone down. Very brief conversation. I rubbed my eyes, then I looked back at the phone. My wife's name was Amanda. I went into the living room and my wife was there, watching TV. The front door was locked.

Now I began to get a bit worried. Why couldn't I remember what I was doing. Was I hearing things? Seeing things? Was I just tired? Maybe I had some kind of illness that was making me confused or making me lose my memories and my sense of date and time. I wasn't sure. I went up to bed. In the middle of the night I was woken up again by the dog barking. I ignored it. The dog burst into the room and jumped on the bed, licking my face. I couldn't be bothered to wake up fully so I patted him and went back to sleep. In the morning there was black hair all over the bed but no dog. I didn't have a dog. I washed the bedding. I had dark hair; maybe the bedsheets were just getting dirty.

Yesterday was Saturday. Today was Sunday. I checked my phone to make sure it was Sunday. I went downstairs to get breakfast, then the phone rang.
"Hey." It was Aaron. "Why aren't you at work today? The boss is gonna be furious if you miss two days in a row."
"It's Sunday..." I replied. I heard a beep. He had hung up the phone.

I felt dizzy and slightly nauseous, so I went back up to my room. I checked my phone again. It was definitely Sunday. The time. Midday. Had I really slept in that late? I didn't feel like sleeping so I sat down again to do some work. I opened the document I'd been writing on the previous night. One hundred pages. Wow, that explained why I'd been up so late. I must have gotten a lot done. I opened it and began to read through it. I stopped scrolling. One hundred pages. One hundred pages of the same line, repeated over and over again.

It's all in your head

It's all in your head

It's all in your head

I clicked off the document, panicked. What was happening to me? I decided to ring up the doctor. He asked me to describe my symptoms. I told him I couldn't remember what day it was, I kept seeing and hearing things, and that everything just seemed strange and I couldn't explain it.
"Maybe it's all in your head." He said.
I almost dropped the phone. "What?"
"I said, you should try taking sleeping pills." He said. "You might be suffering from lack of sleep."
I sighed. "Oh, okay. Of course."

I went into the kitchen and found a bottle labelled 'silent night sleeping pills'.
I took one. Or two. Or five. I don't remember. Pretty soon after that, I fell asleep on the sofa.

I woke up in my own bed. It was dark. Maybe my wife had somehow moved me when she got home. I looked over my shoulder. She was fast asleep next to me. I felt a bit uneasy so I climbed out of bed as quietly and gently as I could so I wouldn't wake her, and tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen.

I saw that the kitchen light was on. Had I left it on before falling asleep? Maybe Emma, no, Amanda. Maybe Amanda had left it on when she got in from work. Was she at work? I couldn't remember where she'd been. Was it even Sunday anymore?

I opened the kitchen door, and I almost had a heart attack when I saw my wife standing there by the sink, filling up a glass.
"Jesus Emma what are you doing awake?" I asked her. She turned around.
"You said you wanted a glass of water." She said, smiling. She handed me the glass. There was something strange about her smile. I took it anyway and drank it. We both went back upstairs to bed, and I left the glass on the bedside table. In the morning my wife asked me why there was a glass on the bedside table.
"You gave it to me last night." I said, confused. "When we were in the kitchen."
She looked at me, afraid. "I didn't wake up at all last night. Are you sure you didn't dream it?"
I sighed, rubbing my eyes.
"Probably."

I decided I had had enough of this. I got dressed and went downstairs. I couldn't find my keys.
"Have you seen my keys?" I called to my wife.
"Have you checked your jacket pocket?" She asked. I looked at her.
"What?"
She handed the keys to me.
"I said the counter. They were on the counter. Where you always leave them, everyday."
I took them from her.

I got into my car and drove down to the surgery. I made an appointment and waited for the doctor to call me. The people in the waiting room were whispering so loud it gave me a headache. When the doctor came, I went into his room and sat down. My head suddenly felt heavy. I closed my eyes. Everything was dark.

Then all of a sudden it wasn't. I opened my eyes. I was sat in a chair in a bright white room. I tried to move but my arms were strapped down. I wanted to panic, but I was so sleepy..

Just then, the doctor enters the room. Amanda was there, dressed all in white, like the nurse. I wondered why she was dressed up as a nurse. I asked the doctor what he was doing.
"Just giving you your medicine, as always." He said. His name badge read 'Aaron.' I smiled to myself. Just like the one I work with.

Later a woman came to visit me. She dressed in the same clothes my wife used to wear, but she wasn't my wife. She said she was, but she wasn't. My wife didn't look or sound anything like her. I wondered why his strange woman was here pretending to be my wife. Maybe this was some kind of test. Maybe they thought I was going crazy.
'Well I'm not' I thought triumphantly. I still remembered exactly what my wife looked and sounded like. Their trick hadn't worked. I tried to remember what I'd come here for. Taking my dog to the vets? No, that couldn't be it? Maybe I'd had an accident driving over? No, that wasn't it either. I couldn't remember. Anyway, I was sure it'd be over soon and I'd be able to go home and go to bed.

Amanda came back later to give me more medicine.
"Why are you dressed as a nurse?" I asked her with a dopey smile.
"I am a nurse." She said, sighing. "Have been all my life. How many times do I have to tell you this?"
I laughed. "Really funny."
"No, it's still not funny."

I looked at her.
"When can I go home?" I asked, confused.
She didn't even look at me, preparing a needle. I couldn't move my arms to resist even if I wanted to, which I hadn't. My medicine would make me better. Then I could go home.
"You'd think that after ten years you'd stop asking." She replied. I didn't even feel the prick of the needle as it went in.
"Just relax. Remember, it's all in your head."

Author's Note

I don't usually write horror stuff so tell me what you think :)

Reviews

[Mitch]

If this is an early attempt at horror, I think this is a fairly good start. Go back and check to make sure all your verb tenses match. I like the idea here where the main character is losing touch with reality and isn't sure what is real and what isn't. Maybe you can look at playing up tension towards the end with an argument with a wife or some instance where he KNOWS something is wrong but others are telling him it isn't. The whole piece he just kind of goes along with whatever and there isn't a sense of tension or escalation of the story. The end works with him being pacified with the drugs and will bring even more change if the stakes feel higher before that.

Keep writing. I'd love to see more from you.