A Perfect World

  This story contains sensitive content including descriptions of physical violence, murder, existentialism and delusions, and paranoia.

      My sanity had often been questioned, though not by me. I was sure of my sanity, but my being different had often caused others to believe I was absolutely mad. I was hardly similar to them, sure, but why would I want to be? Everything I had ever needed could be supplied by my own mind, there was never any need for anyone else. So let me be ostracized, let me be alienated, it is the blessing of being different.

               I embraced my loneliness, I preferred it. It allowed me space to build the world I wanted, to build an entire universe where I was in charge, where nothing could exist without me having created it. Who wouldn’t want that? I had friends, I had a family, and there was nothing that could threaten them, except Reality.

               Reality, as it existed for others, was thankfully not a place I frequented. I had to sustain my physical being, lest my own world cease to exist, and this required leaving my secluded home and venturing into the terrible realm of Reality. On the day that my story takes place, I was to take a hasty trip into town for the essentials with which I kept myself fed.         

               I often chose early mornings for my errands, when people were scarce. I had become a sort of spectacle amongst the townsfolk, and the less of them I encountered, the better. Not to mention the threat they all posed to my world. I had been called paranoid before, but that suggested my reasoning was irrational. It was hardly so, and the people of Reality had proven that. I had not always been so careful with my tongue, which earned me the labels I so unfairly wore. Lunatic, madman, crazy. I was none of those things, but rather, quite intelligent, a genius even. I now guarded my secrets rather closely. Those who meant to force me to conform to Reality would not be allowed the secret to living in a most perfect world. They would not be rewarded for threatening to take my perfect world away.

               I wore my usual clothes, my only clothes, black slippers, black sweatpants, and a black hoodie. The less of me that could be seen, the better. How I was viewed here did not matter, it would not change the way I was viewed in my world, but allowing people to see me felt like allowing them to see a part of my world, and they had not earned such a privilege. I kept to myself entirely. No questions, no answers, no smiles, no nods of my head. I would get what I needed and then return home, home to my family that did not exist here.

 I remember the sky being gray, threatening rain. It had quickened my already accelerated step. Being caught in the rain would not change anything in my world, but it would delay my return to it. I always bought the same things, food did not have to taste good in Reality, I could make whatever I wanted in my mind, but it did have to sustain me. I could feel the eyes of people on me, I could hear the whispers they shared, but my concern was not here, so long as they did not approach me. I was out in minutes, racing home as fast as I could without quite scrambling. I had matters to attend to in my own world, the world where people understood me.

I was only feet from my front door, and just in time as the wind blew a promise of rain through the air, when my eyes fell upon a curious detail I was so near missing entirely. The steps to my front door were cracked, crumbling stone, the dust and dirt from which I never bothered to brush away. So why now were the steps clear, as if swept with a broom? I could almost see the strokes from the bristles on the stone. People had come to my door before, it was no secret that a man who didn’t belong lived there. People wanted me gone. They wanted my eyesore of a home gone. People like me were dangerous, unpredictable. It mattered none that I had never harmed anyone, they believed that I would because that’s what insane people do. It was their own obsession with people who were different that drove them to paranoia and madness. They would push someone to violence, if only to prove themselves right.

I knew they would come for me, someday I knew they would. I cautiously turned the doorknob and the door pushed open unhindered by the lock I had latched before leaving. Fear, sickness, anger all surged through me. Someone was in my house. I set my grocery bag on the floor, quietly closing the door behind me, and scanned the room with my eyes. I could see no one, but knew they must be there. I had prepared for this, as well as I could, knowing this day would come. I removed the knife I had taped under the desk by the door and crept toward the kitchen.

The sweat on my hands threatened to compromise my grip, but I only grasped tighter, my fingernails digging into my palm. I imagined that whoever was here was not unarmed, but I had everything to lose should I let them take me alive. The sound of the faucet turning on startled me more than I already was, and I nearly jumped, but doing so would have revealed my position just beyond the corner of the wall. I, however, now knew theirs, and this granted me the advantage.

I screamed wildly as I lunged around the corner, thrusting the weapon into the intruder. A high pitched wail drowned out my own animalistic yell as I drove the knife indiscriminately into them until silence, with the exception of my gasping breaths, filled the room.

Only now, as the trespasser lay in a growing pool of crimson, did I recognize a face not much unlike my own. The woman now lifeless upon the kitchen floor was my mother, but only in this world. Most people might be overcome with sadness at such a realization, but I have already made it clear that I am not most people. I had a mother, a perfect mother, and this was not her. I tossed the knife into the sink and turned off the faucet. Relief washed over me as I made my way to the couch in an otherwise empty living room. They would come for me, but for now I was safe. With a long exhale and a closing of my eyes I found myself in my world, endless possibilities at my fingertips. Perhaps I would visit my mother.