732 words (2 minute read)

Delusions

Sam was sure she was going crazy as she stood in the mirror and watched her reflection. Her raven black hair was a mess, she had pulled it all on top of her head to get it the hell out of her way, it looked awful but she had no one to impress. Dark circles encased her Kelly green eyes, making her look fifteen years older than she was. She was only twenty-four yet she felt sixty.

Maybe she was having a breakdown, between school and trying to figure out how to pay rent each month— She was pretty sure she was failing in both things.

Her mother had battled mental illness, abuse, psychosis. Most of her childhood was spent visiting her in psych wards, that’s a fucked up thing for a kid to see. That’s how Sam knew she wanted to study the human brain, maybe then she could understand why her mother left her and why her father hated them so much.

’I’m not crazy, I’m fine,’ She repeated at least twelve times a day over the last six months.

Images of all the trauma in her life kept flashing across her brain, every time she closed her eyes—some old memory played like a movie on the back her eyelids.

She thought she had a new beginning when she moved out from her aunt’s house at eighteen—she graduated high school top of her class and knew exactly where she wanted to go to college, Washington University. Her aunt Virginia had been so proud of her, always telling her how she was better than her parents. Sam’s father was Virginia’s younger brother—she had always disapproved of his extremist views on religion and race. He sent Sam away at the age of six when her mother had been admitted into a Portland psychiatric ward— and Virginia being her only family. Her mother never spoke of her family and Sam was convinced she didn’t have any—that she was born from a tube and raised as a test subject in some top secret government facility, it would at least explain one thing about her mother—for which Sam had no answers.

For the longest time she just stared at her reflection in the mirror, etching every detail of her face into her memory. The fine lines around each of her eyes from the moments of laughter Jack had inflicted upon her, too the frown line that was beginning to form on the left corner of her mouth. She would have to buy some new night cream to combat that. She looked down at her stomach, lifting up her shirt and rubbing her hands over her belly button. It had begun to growl and rumble loudly, she should have guest she was hungry and that’s why she wasn’t feeling herself—despite the fact she had completely lost her appetite after the attack in the alley.

Jack hadn’t made it over to her apartment yet, even though he said he would stop by in the morning. Sam slid down the wall to her bottom, across from the mirror that hung up in her bathroom, tucking her knees to her chest—it was almost four-thirty in the afternoon already and Jack had turned out to be a no show. She needed him, as she sat sulking around her apartment in nothing but an old t-shirt and her underwear—couldn’t even bother to put on pants.

Her stomach growled at her again—moaning she grabbed at the door handle, using it to help her up off the floor.

"Food, I need fucking food." She grumbled as she shuffled her feet in the direction of the kitchen, holding her arms out and pretending she really was a zombie.

She put her arms back down to her side when she entered the kitchen, and walked to the fridge—slightly afraid to open it after she had lost power , and the whole fiasco with the freezer.

Opening the door, the light came on and illuminated the pathetic contents of her fridge.

"Damn it," She thrusted her index finger in the air as she slammed the fridge door closed again,"Shit, where are my pants?"

Next Chapter: Deceptions