[ToC]

 

PARANOIA

Maddie Clausius

 

 

 So we find ourselves at the base of lakes (which we had been led to believe were unclean) on August nights: unsexed, unaccounted for, damp. Young, you might say. The distrust was there from the beginning. This landscape is gold and obvious, save the silver tips of waves that slither like serpents on the belly of a dark and dormant beast. And yes, perhaps this restlessness only springs from simple tricks of the shadows (a taking advantage of or a violation of our naive inquisitions); but we still believed this shoreline might be the site of some sinister event (this uncertainty ​ate at us). We venture out every evening in service of this. We will sit on a wet rock and watch the liquidation of moon into water. These nights are thickly insidious, and uncertain as we are, we imagine what we cannot see beyond the reach of this moonlight: a green figure on the horizon, a drop or two of blood on a branch, our own bodies in a boat. You will understand how we begin to naturally expect (or even hope) to see the divine face of a dead girl float to the surface and shimmer knowingly before us (maybe then we could dip our hair in the water,​ ​touch​ ​her​ ​white​ ​dress,​ ​clean​ ​ourselves,​ ​and​ ​sleep).

 

 

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My piece was created from that sort of guilty fascination with watching true crime stories. This has caused me to have a distrust towards my surroundings, and to always half-expect to discover a dead body around every corner.