Imposter Syndrome | Theland E. Thomas

I turn the key in the door and step inside, greeted by a blast of cool air. The AC’s been left on. Wait. My house is completely empty. Not robbed, unlived. No furniture, no dishes, no pictures. I pace through the living room and the kitchen. Empty. Sterile. Pristine. Not a spot on the counter, not an imprint on the carpet. But this is my house. This is where I’m supposed to be. Like an intruder, I slink upstairs, peering past the railing into the vacant rooms. There’s a car alarm going off in the distance. Slowly, and with trepidation, I turn the knob to my bedroom and open the door. Everything is gone. My bookshelf, bed, desk, disappeared. Only the four white walls stare curiously back at me.

I back out of the room, slam the door, and rush down the stairs. Out the window, I see my mother’s golden sedan approaching from down the street. A slight smile forms on my face when I realize that the horn is blaring from her car. Why can’t she turn it off? As she pulls into the driveway, I take her keys out of my pocket and turn off the alarm.

Something shifts in the corner of my eye, and I turn to see my mom sitting on a tan couch,legs crossed.

“Hi,” I start to say, but out the window, mom is sitting in her car wearing all black, and here she is on the couch in a green blouse. A queasy feeling finds my gut, as I eye my mom. She stares at me oddly, silently. “Hi, mom,” I say. No response. I draw closer, but keep my distance. “How can you be here if you’re in the car?” No response.

There’s something eerily captivating about her, and I can’t tear my eyes away. There’s something a little off, and her shadow is a little too dark. Everything here is so strange, lonely, and unfamiliar. All of the love has been sapped from this house, except for this one piece of furniture with my mother sitting on it. She sits silently beckoning for me to come closer, welcoming me with unconditional love.

Suddenly, I don’t care if she’s a little off, I just want to be closer to her, to feel some love, to wrap up in her arms and sleep. I come closer and lean in for a hug, but she doesn’t meet me halfway or raise her arms. When I try to embrace her, I can’t. An invisible barrier keeps me away. I try to fight against it, but the force is too strong, and I step back. From far away, I hear the car alarm again.

Staring at me, my mother stands and walks in front of the door. Her head is to the side, and she looks from the corner of her eye. Now I can see what’s off with her features. They’re too sharp. Her eyes and brows are angled, her nose is larger and pointed, and her chin juts. A long, diabolical smile splits her face. She is not my mother. She is an imposter. A tingling uneasiness creeps up from behind. Her stare splits my being with a radiant darkness, pulsing in tune with the darkness in me.

Then her features begin to morph and shift, melting into something else. Someone else. Her eyebrows grow thinner, her features softer. Her hair bleaches blonde and, by some unseen force, wraps into a ponytail. This young woman still gazes into me, hypnotizing me with her breathtaking sensuality. I am her captive held in place and drawn toward her. My eyes follow her as she glides back to the couch and sits gracefully. Her body monopolizes my entire field of vision. Her eyes grip my heart, pumping it faster and faster.

Suddenly, I am overcome by arousal, and I rush to the couch. My hair stands on end as my hands wrap around her waist and brush back a blonde lock. I lean in for a kiss, but at the last second, just as I feel her hot breath, I look into her eyes and see orbs of endless black, swirling, undulating, expanding, and caving in upon themselves. Her eyes are a portal to another realm - the bulging gates barely holding back a hungry evil.

Stumbling, I jump back and fall. Outside, my mother’s car is empty. On the couch, the imposter has disappeared. Only the car horn grows louder and louder and louder and louder and louder until--

I awaken with a gasp on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by a fluid darkness that seems to breathe and move. Before me is my black desk, but I can’t see it in the dark. Behind me, my black bed. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. No floorboard creaks or rustling wind, only prowling silence. I wonder how long I’ve been sleeping.

Then, my sister opens the door behind me and comes into the room. With her, floats the sound of a video game she’s playing. I want to get up, to turn around and talk to her, but somehow, I can’t find the strength. My limbs and head weigh heavily, holding me in place. It’s like I’m stuck in the middle space between sleep and wakefulness. I start kicking my legs, calling her name. My foot hits my nightstand with each kick, but no matter how much I call, she can’t hear me. She just stands behind me, out of sight, playing her video game. Finally, I scream her name with all my might, but it just comes through as a weak, “Uhhhh….”

My sister hear this and says, “Wake yourself up then.”

As she speaks, I feel the darkness in the room bend and ebb behind me to where my sister stands. Then, I feel in my gut that’s it’s not my sister behind me, but some malicious imposter. The thing standing behind me was not my sister, but a being crafted from darkness with harmful intent. I must wake up!

I kick faster, scream as hard as I can, filling the house with sound, sending the lamp and other objects crashing from the nightstand and the desk. I grit my teeth and close my eyes, but when I open them again, everything is the same. There is no sound, nothing has fallen, and the evil presence still lurks behind me. I scream at the top of my lungs, but all I can hear is that weak, “Uhhhh....”

Drifting again, I open my eyes to see my sister’s feet and pink pajama pants. She is standing over me, but it isn’t her. Panic screams for me to move, but I can’t. And when I blink, she is replaced by shadows blacker than the darkness of the room. The shadows hover over my body, pressing me down, trying to seep in. I feel the material force of malevolence strengthening behind me. Even though I can’t turn around, I can see it hovering in the air, slowly swirling behind me.

Like a fog, the blackness descends, close enough for a kiss. Its limbs wrap around my neck, gripping like a hug, like a noose, constricting my breathing, tightening, leaving me gasping for air. I squirm and scream,  but it only comes out as, “Uhhhh…. Uhhhh…. Uhhhh!”

Depressing Weekend: Cloud Suicide | Theland E. Thomas

I drink coffee in sips, but I drink water in gulps. Coffee is a slow drip, a steady injection of liquid energy. Water is thirst quenching, life giving. Greedily, I gulp water from my coffee mug and watch a drifting, wispy cloud commit suicide. Beaten by the wind, dried out by the sun, little puffs without enough water to survive. All the water is formless in the air or snow on the ground or liquid in my hand or contaminated with ground coffee and used to fuel a dependency. Sometimes, I think coffee is something I can’t live without, but after the highs and lows those brown beans bring, I’m left with an intolerable thirst. Without coffee, I can still wake up in the morning. Without water, I will shrivel up and dissolve like that wispy cloud.

I had a dream that I met this great girl at a club. Or maybe it was a private party at a club. Who knows, it was a dream. But anyway, her and I were two kindred hearts. Both seeking something, but uncomfortable with the party atmosphere. I don’t know who approached who, but once we started talking we didn’t stop all night, even though we had to huddle together and practically shout into each other’s ears. No, I’m not sure what we discussed, but, whatever it was, we were laughing all night. And she was absolutely gorgeous. What did she look like? I honestly don’t know. All I can remember is that she had dark hair. Well, anyway, we were still laughing and having a good time by the time everyone had left, and finally the place was empty and we had to go too. When we left, I woke up smiling, totally convinced I’d fallen in love that night, and then I had to face the slow realization that the girl didn’t exist and that it was all a fantasy.

Dreams are like clouds. They’re tangible but untouchable, heavy yet weightless.

Why do I even wave to people in the halls? They never wave back. I wonder if something happened to me while I was gone. During the break, I must have disappeared. My friends stopped contacting me. When I say hi to someone they don’t hear me. When I wave, they don’t see me. At first, I wondered if maybe I was speaking too softly, so I went up to someone I used to know and shouted her name, flailing my arms. She smiled, waved, and ran right past me into the embrace of another. Then, in the hall, I stood still to see if anyone would bump into or even brush me. The crowd just walked past me and through me. Desperate, I shredded my voice screaming and wore myself out running. But nobody noticed, nobody saw, nobody cared. Eventually, I sat on the sidelines of their lives, crushing despair weighing on me, watching everybody else interact. Laughing. Eating. Sharing. Loving. I sat and watched. Alone.

Dear God, if you reject me on Judgment Day, you’ll only be the second father to do so. I was tired of being so sinful, so I stopped believing in sin. I thought that you were the source of my self-hatred, and without you I would be happier. And I was for a little while, but now I don’t have you, and I still hate myself. Which came first, the faithful or the faithless? I used to talk to God, but I couldn’t hear him. Now he doesn't hear me because I don't talk to him. I asked God, what happened to your faithfulness? He said, I delivered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I asked, what about the other six million?

They say people who think happy people are deceiving themselves are depressed. But it’s true. All you happy people, sorry to break the news: you’re deceiving yourselves. Just take a look around. They say to identify and call out depressive thoughts. As if the depressive thoughts aren’t my own. Well, I thought it, didn’t I? My happiness is not contingent upon anything. If I get a raise, I will not be happy. If I get straight A’s, I will not be happy. If I am surrounded by loving family and friends, I will not be happy. If I stop everything and go travel the world, I will not be happy. When I was younger, my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I said, I wanted to be happy. He said wisely, “If you are not happy now, you never will be.” He was right. Funny thing is, happy clouds are dark, stormy, and brooding. They scream and cry and rush in a whirlwind. Depressed clouds commit suicide.

It’s all a joke. Stop looking at me like that.

No Escape From Reality | Theland E. Thomas

My bed is black, my room is black, the space behind my eyelids is black, but there are shades of light floating, spinning, changing, barely visible in the black. Heavy eyelids are not the cause as much as another state of mind. I feel my mentality shift from processing alertness to the calmness of flowing waves, and in this state, I lose sense of my heavy body and begin to drift out to sea to a new world not quite bound to the one I’m tethered to in wakefulness. I’m traveling on the black sea of my mind, the faint buzzing of electricity crashing about me, moving me deeper into tranquil numbness, silence, sleep.

I travel on the waves with the content knowledge of past experience. I know where I’m going, but I don’t know what I’ll find there. Soon, I arrive on the shores of a new reality. I know when I arrive, I won’t be fully aware I’m dreaming. That it will be just like wakefulness, but with a different set of rules that make complete sense in context. I hear the tick of the clock on my wall distort until each tick is a piercing, metallic ring, like the pounding of steel beams against each other. The black quickly deteriorates from the middle, another scene bleeding through.

It’s a bookstore. I’ve just entered, and I walk past the popular fiction display at the front, the smell of coffee wafting from the shop on my left. I love bookstores. They’re almost too much - a place stacked with shelves and shelves of thousands upon thousands of books with pages upon pages of alternate realities, differing perspectives of life, love, sorrow, and happiness. It’s a place of infinite possibilities. I remember days of youth spent in libraries and bookstores, reading books without buying them, the new book smell, fast food, essays and quietly waving goodbye, the second-to-last person to leave.

I take a step toward the fiction section but for some reason am compelled to look to my left. There, I see a girl I know but am afraid to recognize. I can see emotions battling on her face, eyebrows knitting as she starts to smile, then her face softening with worried, hopeful eyes. She lifts a hand. “Hi.”

This inevitable meeting is something I’ve consistently prevented myself from thinking of, and now, confronted with it, I don’t know what to do. She might disappear if I turn away, so I do that. Everything behind me fades into a blur of grey as I walk around the display Now, before me is a man in a trenchcoat with a hat pulled low over his face. He seems to be smoking, but I can’t smell anything but the delicious new book smell blending with the coffee. The man reaches into his coat and pulls out a container. “Hey, man, you want some hummus?”

“Actually, I do.” I take the container from him, and he gives me a spoon.

“This is going to be the best damn hummus you’ve ever tasted.”

I pry the lid open and eat a spoonful, realizing that this is, in fact, the best hummus I’ve ever tasted. I remark, “You’re right, this is the best hummus I’ve ever tasted.”

“Told you,” he said. “That’ll be just ten dollars.”

I nearly choked on my second scoop. “What? I’m not paying ten dollars for -”

“Look, you took the hummus. It’s ten dollars.”

“I don’t want it.”

I try to give him back the container, but he refuses to take it. “Hey, I offer you some hummus, and you take it, and then you don’t want to pay me. What kind of a person are you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have ten dollars.” I wag the container in my hand, but when he doesn’t take it, I drop it, turn around, and walk away.

The girl is gone. I escape into rows of bookshelves, keeping my head bent, scanning the spines. What I’m looking for, I don’t know, but I’ll recognize it when I find it. I search thoroughly, scanning each individual title, author. I search row by row, up, down, and across, but I still can’t find it. I move to the next row and stop, startled by who’s standing there.

My heart plummets and races at the same time. It’s my dad. He’s spent eight years avoiding me, and I’ve spent eight avoiding him, and here he is, casually browsing through a bookstore as if he has a life outside of my supposed construction of him. He sees me, and his face lights up. He says my name, and I frown in disgust. He takes a step forward, and I take a step back. I don’t want to deal with this right now, so I turn my back and walk away, hiding a frenetic impulse to run with a collected demeanor.

I turn between the bookcases until I feel I’ve lost him. I slow, along with the thumping in my chest, and turn one more time. There she is again. Ana. I nearly jump when I see her. This time, the hope in her face has been eclipsed with sadness. She utters a dejected, “Hey.”

“Hey.” I stand fair distance from her, an asinine precaution considering that she can hurt me from any distance. The mature thing to do would be to stay and talk things out, but a little, red alarm is screaming in the back of my mind.

“So,” she starts, “how are you doing?”

Ana stands immediately before me, and there are books on either side, but beyond that is a blur of grey. She’s looking at me, awaiting my reply, and I can feel the tension of an unstable reality pulling me at the seams. I need to escape somehow. I need to change the course. Time seems to stand still, and I have the odd sense of the gears in another part of my head turning. I’m thinking, but I can’t access what I’m thinking about. And that’s when I realize that this is a dream.

I turn away from Ana and walk deeper into the store. I don’t want run from her just to bump into my dad again. At the same time, I’m pushing to find a way out. I’m straining to get back to that state of blackness, back to the sea through which I can bubble to wakefulness. But, it’s no use - I’m stuck here. In the middle of the store is the man in the trenchcoat standing behind a small stand that holds canisters of coffee.

Coffee! That’s what I need! Coffee can wake me up! I approach the stand and ask, “Can I have some coffee?”

“Yeah,” the man says from below the brim of his hat, “for twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars! You know there’s a cheaper coffee shop right over there, right!”

“But that coffee won’t keep you awake. This one will.”

“Fine.” I pull a twenty from my pocket and lay it on the table. What flavors do you have?”

“Got regular, decaf, and hot water.”

I take the regular and sip it vigorously as I make my way back toward the door, bracing against the searing heat that burns my mouth and raises the bumps on my tongue. The shop grows fuzzy in my peripheral as I approach the exit. Black spots swim in my vision, and, though I’m standing, I feel as though I’m not upright. My eyelids are heavy as I feel myself drifting from the dream and repopulating my body. Finally, I push on the door…

And it’s locked. I snap back to the bookstore with a sense of dread. The door shifts and buckles against my futile pushes. Dread crashes over me, an uneasy swimming feeling. I’m trapped. I turn from the door and scan the building. Leaking coffee slides down my fingers, drips from the cup, and disappears into the stylish, spotted carpet.

I don’t see my dad, Ana, or the trenchcoat guy, so I pick a armchair in the corner and pretend to read a titleless book from the shelf. I hold it in front of my face so I can peer over it, but then I hear a voice to my left. Of course, it’s Ana. I gulp, my throat suddenly dry.

“Oh, hi,” I say, “what a coincidence running into you here.” I look at the book, realizing that no one could have gotten three-fourths of the way through in such a short amount of time. Nervously, I stand, placing the book upside-down on the chair’s arm. I grip the coffee, using it as a barrier between myself and her.

“Hey,” she says. She’s nervous too. She’s wringing her hands and biting her lip. Despite the cold front I put on, something inside of me goes soft. I want to embrace her, to be close to her again. To tell her everything’s okay. To forgive her.

She continues. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but…” she looks down at her feet. I’m not ready for this. I know what she’s about to say, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget or to let go of the acidic pain I’ve been clutching. “...I’m really really sorry for what happened. How I treated you… it wasn’t right, and I’m so sorry.”

The tears welling up in her eyes trigger my own, and I don’t try to wipe them back as they fall. I try to say something, but the words won’t come. I desperately need to get out of here. I take swig of coffee.

Suddenly, a shadow overtakes Ana. It’s my dad, I recognize more through implication than through form. He’s eschewed his human form for that of a shadow that towers tall and spreads wide and bleeds in disappearing currents. Fear strikes to the core of my being, and I turn to run, but the shadow expands, enveloping Ana and everything around me until I’m floating in a completely black space. Before me, I see remnants of my dad’s distorted face hanging in the air, his eyes, nose, and mouth disassociated from any physical body, his features one with the darkness.

“Son,” he says, his voice muted by surrounding black, “We should make some time to talk.”

I cross my arms, and I know if I turn my back or close my eyes, his face will still be right there in front of me. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I say.

“Son, you have to understand. I am a sinner. Will you please hear me out?”

Anger and pain rushes to the forefront, and I hate that it manifests as hot, seething tears. “Why should I?” My sobbing voice can’t convey the hatred and bitterness I feel, though I try to squeeze it into every word.

“Because I’m your father,” he pleads.

“No,” I shout, the anger bursting forth. “You were my father before you left, but you threw that all away. I’ll never forgive you!”

With that, my dad’s face dissolves, and the black seems to swirl to a central point, releasing me into the bookstore. The light blares into my squinting eyes, and I hear a horrible sound - a collective wail, sorrowful, heartfelt weeping from an entire crowd. What’s going on? My eyes adjust, and I see the man in the trenchcoat looking down on me from under his hat, shaking his head. Behind him, is the weeping crowd - my family and friends - my mother, brothers and sisters, my best friend, my grandparents, Ana, and my dad - all crying uncontrollably, all covering their faces. My mother holds my grandma as she sobs, staring at me with the black make-up smearing down her face. My best friend covers his mouth and shakes his head at me. Ana hugs herself and rocks back and forth, unable to meet my gaze, and my dad sits cradling his face, his tears soaking his shirt.

The weeping is horrible and overwhelming. It rattles me to the core until I’m weeping too, crumbling to my knees, and I lose grip of the coffee and shut my eyes as the tears stream and flow like water from a creek flowing naturally between rocks at night, traveling in aimlessly in a direct route going further and further and deeper and deeper and closer and closer until I open my eyes in my dark room with a heavy heart and a gasp.

I roll onto my side and find my phone, prompting its cold light that cuts the night. New message from Ana: “Hey”.

I open it up and type a cautious reply. Then I delete what I was writing. Then I delete her message. Then I delete her contact information. Then I roll over and go back to sleep.