Paranoid

[Sinful]

 

Paranoid

 

“Plaft!” sounds the newspaper when it hits my front door. Time to wake up: another boring day ahead. As I get up from my bed, I notice I’m wearing a bathrobe. What the hell am I doing in a bathrobe - do I even have a bathrobe?

 

Walking through the living room, I look at the clock on the wall: 5:35AM. Damn newspaper kid, five o’ morning and he’s waking me up for this? I open the front door, the pollution invading my nostrils without a warning.

“Oh! The smell of napalm in the morning!” I say to myself, reminding of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. Great movie, great movie…

 

After this it all happens in a matter of seconds: I hear a car horn, its acute sound penetrating my ears: the worst melody you can hear just after waking up. I look at the corner the sound came from: it was only the news boy in his stupid little bike trying to wake up more poor souls like me. As he throws another newspaper, he misses and ends up hitting the street sign: Birdies Street. Oh, yeah, Birdies street… The street I spent most of my not so exciting life. Oh, the football matches when I was a kid… Hey, wait. I didn’t spend my childhood here. In fact I just moved here a year ago or something. Why the hell did I remember the football matches? I forget the football matches for a second as my eyes meet the street sign once more: Birdies Street, oh… What? YN-15 Street?

 

What do you mean, YN-15 Street? I get temporarily shocked, analyzing all the plausible possibilities about my situation (even though I consider, of course, most of times, the less plausible and imaginary ones).

 

I was kidnapped, obviously. With nowadays violence -in the old days, as you might now, the police used to catch the bad guys- and the recurring murders, robberies, and others around, I was probably doped, thrown in the back of a random SUV and brought here. But if I were really kidnapped, then what am I doing standing in a house door holding a newspaper, instead of being tied to a chair with an eight feet tall black man, with a desert eagle pointed to my noise?

Maybe, in a more romantic view of my whereabouts, I had a love night, drank a little too much and ended up here. If that’s the case, a lovely lady will be waiting for me in bed, probably sleeping. Oh, yeah, I’m a tiger, a lover boy, why not? I’m not that old: fifty two years well spent, white hair and naughty little wrinkles around my face… Hey, wait a minute. Why am I describing myself like a hooker in the classifieds from a newspaper? Oh, yeah, the newspaper: it’s in my hand. I wonder if my name is in the classifieds… There’s also the possibility that I’ve drank way too much, and maybe the lady at the bed isn’t one of the finest, but one of the so satirized pigs that roam around cheap pubs looking for men to do… Anyway, I shouldn’t check her out just in case. I should just take my clothes (and where are those?) and get the hell out of here. Maybe I should bring the paper. Reading is always a good thing.

 

Step by step, I walk inside the enclosure: a twenty inch dusty television hangs from one of those cheap wall supports that, as the weakest wind breaks through, looks like it’s going to fall. A cheap couch, the kind which poor people buy in ten installments with a terribly ugly pattern consisted of blue and orange. A rug hung in a wall (actually an improvised curtain). All the carelessness present in this room indicates that this is prison house and that I was kidnapped. In that case, the eight feet tall black man could be anywhere. I look over my left shoulder: nothing here, thank god. Back to my second theory: maybe this is a woman’s house. A really poor one, for instance -probably one of the pigs. Oh, the pigs. What am I doing in a pig’s house? Oh, the decadence. I can extract one solid conclusion from these last thoughts: this is definitely not my house. I walk back to the room and see a small single sized bed. At least the I didn’t sleep with the pig. Who knows the kind of diseases these putrid feminine species hold inside their intimate parts?

 

My clothes aren’t visible. I notice a dirty clothes basket near the bed. I take the risk and remove its cover. I rummage through it for a few seconds and find a creased Manchester football shirt. Damn Manchester - Liverpool was, is, and will always be the best team in the whole world. I take out the bathrobe -I’m naked!- and put it on anyway. Seconds later I’m wearing a pair of sweat stinking jeans and walking out of the room. I look around, having an in-depth view of the environment, and notice there are more doors to the house’s interior spaces. Perhaps I should check the rooms, just to make sure I’m really alone. But then again, what for? I’ll be out of here in a few seconds anyway.

 

As I close the front door, I hear a sound coming from inside the house -something like a door being closed. I freak out and run through the street and hear a horn -the newspaper boy should be away by now, what is he doing here? Something hit my back; the eight feet tall black man finally reached me, after all, and I hit my head against the pavement, passing out in the middle of the street.

I wake up and look around: little square shaped devices with green lights and one or two transparent bags full of some kind of a red substance. A pair of eyes come out of the white hell the room looks like.

 

“Everything’s gonna be just fine,” the eyes say. Yeah, right. If this is a medical room and he is a doctor, I’m in a hospital, so Mr. Eight feet tall won’t be able to catch me here. God knows what he wanted with me, there’s all kind of crazy people around the world..

“What happened to the kidnapper?” I ask. The eyes turn back and disappear.

 

A pair of eyes with brown skin around appears: he’s here. A gun barrel incorporates in front of my face; a rapid din makes me die.

 

 

“Plaft!” sounds the newspaper when it hits my front door. I’ve never been so happy to wake up by that than now. I get up from my bed and slowly walk to the front door. Everything was a dream, a silly dream, for instance. I graze my bathrobe in the living room’s wood furniture.

Do I have a bathrobe?

 

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Did this as a school task and translated to English so I could post it here.

 

Note: It is not supposed to make any sense, as it is, as you may have noticed, a surrealistic piece.

Edited June 25, 2007 by Sinful

[saltinespike]

Nice work! Alas, there are a few grammatical errors, but the overall sense of the piece is pretty good, though I do not know what a kidnapper is doing in an old lady house. Ah well.

[Sinful]

That is exactly the point! He doesn't know if it's the kidnapper's or an ugly woman's house, so he considers both possibilities.

[saltinespike]

That is exactly the point! He doesn't know if it's the kidnapper's or an ugly woman's house, so he considers both possibilities.

I know, but an explanation is never offered. You can explain, even in first person, with skill.

[Sinful]

I suppose I should've. It's already over now, so I won't touch it again, but I'll keep that in mind.

 

Thanks for the comment

[Remember This.]

I would say it is explained, considering he is knocked out and killed. Although its a dream, so maybe it was neither - after all, dreams never make sense do they?

 

Anyway, nice read. I like the atmosphere and the first person narrative - hard to pull off I find. A few minor points such as slightly too many uses of 'oh' and 'makes me die' is a bit weak. Other than that, I like it!

[Coral_City]

Very nice read, Sinful. Apart from a few grammatical errors and awkward sentences, overall good translation and better story

 

Awkward:

...with an eight feet tall black man, with a desert eagle pointed to my noise?

The description seemed odd to me, it's a bit hard to explain

 

Good sentence:

Maybe I should bring the paper. Reading is always a good thing.

Despite the man's "situation", he tries to keep a cool head about things, found that a bit comical

[RearEndCollision]

I suppose I should've. It's already over now, so I won't touch it again, but I'll keep that in mind.

That's dumb; editing is a key to good writing.

 

As far as the piece, I found it too hard to read. It is cluttered with things that are useless to the reader because they do nothing whatsoever.

[Sinful]

As far as the piece, I found it too hard to read. It is cluttered with things that are useless to the reader because they do nothing whatsoever.

Such as?

[TonyZimmzy]

I read later and edit this post. It should be good if it's written by ma homeboy Sinful!

 

I see you didn't use scripted way either, that's cool. The story I wrote out of script form has yet to recieve any criticism, etc

 

That paper boy was an asshole. It was good for a school writing piece .

Edited June 26, 2007 by TonyZimmzy

[Serafim]

Nice story you got there, sinful. The language of it in certain places made me slighty laugh a bit (ehhh those laughs with nose)