Delusions To Death

• Arsal Babar, Grade 7, Werribee Secondary College -
• Short Story
• 2022

Excellence Award in the 'Summertime Fun ONLINE' competition

Glaring at myself in the grimy mirror with my puffy eye bags, I strike my emaciated face once with my wrinkled palms to bring back my senses. Who am I today? I looked again in the mirror to see a figure still standing there, was it an animal, a human or maybe a peculiar creature? Hallucinations and misconceptions filled my weary and deteriorating mind. It had been over a year since I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the symptoms had only worsened.

Tottering out of my shack in the middle of the bleak woods, I had isolated myself for over five years, avoiding any medication. My legs were rickety due to my old age but somehow I could still run from my track-field days. Those times were more jovial, with no delusions, there was only me and reality as I considered it the simplest point of my life. I was unable to see my rustic home, and I was then at the part of the woods where the trees over- towered me, rising to the sky where the yolky sun melted into lush mounds.

“Dear forest friend where are you?” My voice echoed through the fathomless forest as there was no reply to my call. After I had slouched down onto the withered leaves, I heard the sound of a deer trotting its way towards me. “It had been a while old man!” My friend jubilantly yelled out to me as he nestled against my shoulder, and we talked about the events we missed out on. A prolonged time passed as the sky became littered with stars and my friend had fallen asleep. It was then a cast of a figure that was seen in the distance as I discerned it to be a devil!

“Wake up deer we need to go, there’s a creature after us!” I screamed with my throat parched as I alarmedly shook him awake. We both darted towards any direction with my weakened legs and tried to escape the devil pursuing us. The creature had jagged horns and its teeth protruding out of its mouth as slivered drooled out. Reaching the edge of a cliff, we were in between the devil and the deep sea, most literally, as it enclosed the space between us with each step.

Inching back slowly, I stumbled on my feet and was then dangling on the ledge of the cliff. “Help me up deer!” I called out to him as it chomped on my sleeve and tried to pull me up. My fingers slipped from the edge as I reached out my hand to the deer but then he was gone. Right, my friend wasn’t real, it was just another hallucination, one which would lead me to my death as I fell from the cliff.