Mark the Second, Mark IV

Death of Paranoia

The darkness is closing in. I can feel it. Today must be the day… I have been waiting for this moment for days now… Years… Scared, careful, nervous… I run down the silent lanes, trying to hide between the shadows. Why did I ever leave the crowds? Surely that would have been safer.

I turn around now, hoping to see him. I have never had much of a glance, but I know he is in there. I can feel him eyeing me, always ready to pounce on a moment of weakness. I must know. After all, I have known this dread since I was ten. Perhaps earlier, but I couldn’t remember.

Yes. Between talking to friends in the group, while walking back home, on the drive. I have felt him all the time… It has struck me at times that the imposter could perhaps be disguised as a true friend in the group. One could never be as careful. Groping around in the dark, searching for that tinge of vested interest. For in the dynamics of the world today, one can be destroyed in ways far more devastating than the bullet.

I am sure I have heard his footsteps following me. A talented agent, he sure is, but even the smartest make mistakes. Yet his greatness is in covering his steps just as quickly, ever ready to be driven back to alertness. And one must give some leeway for the patience through over two decades… Like a shadow… A masked terror of death that I still cannot but awe…

My pace gets quicker. I can feel his breath on my side. I have tried confiding the truth to apparent friends in moments of drunken trust. I have been certified paranoid, to the extent of doubting my own sanity. But it is only the truth.

I can trust no one. Not the silence of darkness, nor the crowds of murderers. I can sense the plan in motion. Time is closing in. The predator is tired of the wait. I must start running again. And this time, only faster…

The pain of the bullet is now sinking in. Suddenly I feel no more pain. I smile at my genius flip over the enemy’s guard. Unexpected, I tell myself. The feeling of cold steel burning in my flesh. I drop the knife from my hand. I have beat him at last. I have made his years of chase futile.

I stop. There is no one following me. The world is not out to get me. The crowds are running, late to work. No one seems to care for that bleeding victim. No time for another lunatic. I see the crowds, still about in a blur of red and black.

Perhaps I was truly paranoid all my life. Perhaps there was no one to begin with. Perhaps the enemy never felt me that important.

Insulted and unimportant the corpse falls into the dark lonely side street. A mere corpse.