Paranoia Manifested

I followed the silhouette from a cautious distance, his black figure stark and visible against his white surroundings. The snow seemed to be caught somehow in mid flight, creating a sort of cottony fog that softened the edges of everything except the figure. I wondered momentarily why the snow would stop falling on its way down to earth but it didn’t occur to me that this was actually impossible; I was entirely focused on the stranger ahead of me.

 

He seemed to be carrying a suitcase or parcel of some kind in his right hand, trudging along the road as if following someone or something with extreme focus and intent. I wondered what it was that he was carrying and glanced at my own right hand, vaguely bemused by the black briefcase I had been carrying without being aware of it. I lifted the case to see what was inside. Opening it in front of me, I was more than slightly disappointed to find it empty. Suddenly remembering the man I had been following, I dropped the briefcase to look up at him. His own case was lying open on the ground and he seemed to be staring into the distance ahead. A chill ran along my spine as I lifted my left hand and waved it slowly, my movements mimicked perfectly by the stranger. I turned with a fright to see a second silhouette behind me suddenly turning to face something behind him.

 

I gasped suddenly and opened my eyes, pulling the headphones off my head. Doctor Mensky’s office materialized and I remembered where I was.

“Very good,” the black-bearded, hook-nosed psychologist said, nodding thoughtfully and scribbling on his notepad.

“They were both… me…” I said, wide-eyed and shaken.

“Your paranoia stems from your fear of yourself,” the doctor said, growling his r’s in a heavy Israeli accent as he fast-forwarded through the video on his laptop screen. It showed exactly what I had just seen. “You see, Mister Robinson, you were pursuing yourself, wanting to know what you had to hide, and you were being pursued by yourself at the same time, with the same intention. Your fear of others is nothing more than your suspicious nature coming back to you. What goes around comes around.”

“And the briefcase?” I asked, “What’s the significance of that?”

Mensky smiled, “The briefcase is empty, showing that you never had anything to be suspicious of.”

“My subconscious knows that?” I said, amazed by how much this explanation made sense.

“Your subconscious knows everything, Mister Robinson, everything. Not just about you or about your life, but about everything everywhere. It is only up to you to learn to access that wealth of knowledge. There are many theories about this; most say it isn’t true because it doesn’t seem possible scientifically. But the fact is that the dream state is not very well understood. It places the mind in a realm in which anything is possible. If you can master the dream state, you can create and access anything you choose. I merely suggested to your subconscious to choose to construct a world which represents the problem you came to me with. And your subconscious did the rest.”

I nodded, “Put me under again, I think I know to solve this.”

 

I put on the headphones again and the doctor clicked something I didn’t take note of. The soft sounds of rain and bells started to relax me as my brain began to throb with the subsonic, hypnotic waves of sound that would shift my mind into the dream state…

 

Sipping my beer quietly, I looked around the dingy bar. It seemed familiar but I couldn’t quite place when I had been there before. The music seemed somehow muffled and formless but I paid no attention to that, simply sipping the beer I couldn’t quite taste.

“Excuse me,” a distant voice said to me from the mouth of a man right next to me, “but do I know you from somewhere?”

I shook my head dismissively despite the fact that the stranger looked perhaps vaguely familiar. I couldn’t help but feel powerfully suspicious of the man and I shifted away from him a little, suddenly feeling overwhelmingly uneasy. Thoughts of his intentions to follow me home and rob me at gunpoint flooded my head. I forced myself to resist the growing urge to get up and leave.

 

Just as I turned back to my beer, I felt the slightest movement in my right coat pocket and my eyes darted to where the stranger’s hand was trying to silently slip out my wallet. I grabbed his arm and twisted it savagely, turning to face him. Suddenly I recognized him and knew exactly what was going on. At that point, everything took on a new level of clarity and realism. The music and sounds of people flooded my ears, now sharp and close by and I immediately recognized the bar as the Brazen Head, my local neighbourhood pub where I had once been a well-known regular before my paranoia had become too much to bear in public.

“I can’t steal from myself,” I laughed aloud and twisted my reflection’s arm further.

 

A sharp pain suddenly shot up my own arm and I yelped with fright. To my utter amazement, when I looked down at my arm, my fingers seemed to be fused with those of my reflection. Our arms started to melt into one another, pulling us closer together. It was the strangest sensation, as if my body had been nothing but a shell until then. I physically felt a long-lost self-assuredness flowing back into my body as the reflection melted into me. Seconds later, we were one.

When a beautiful girl tapped my shoulder and offered to buy me a drink, no irrational suspicions or paranoid tales flooded my mind. But since it was my dream there was really no need to spend the night flirting; I skipped immediately to the best part.

© GILAD LEVANON 2011

Reviews

[Larry Dyson]

you should really continue this....it has a deep insight into how many things in Life work...

[Larry Dyson]

Your subconscious knows everything, Mister Robinson, everything. Not just about you or about your life, but about everything everywhere. It is only up to you to learn to access that wealth of knowledge. There are many theories about this; most say it isn’t true because it doesn’t seem possible scientifically. But the fact is that the dream state is not very well understood " it places the mind in a realm in which anything is possible. If you can master the dream state, you can create and access anything you choose. I merely suggested to your subconscious to choose to construct a world which represents the problem you came to me with. And your subconscious did the rest.”...
very profound thinking... I call it the Astral and so do many others and it is exactly how it works...simplistically