Monday 11 February 2008

Paranoia.

She picks up a pack of scuff-edged playing cards and shuffles them. Glancing anxiously about the room, she shuffles them again.

Pauses. Listens. Nothing.

She sets the cards before her on the table. With the slightest of tremors in her hand, she picks the top card. It is old and stained and slippery to the touch. She turns it over.

Ace of Hearts.

She runs the edge of her thumb down the length of the card before flicking it away from her.

She picks the pack up once again and begins to sort the cards into four sets of matching suits. The activity makes her feel increasingly calm; the activity, the structure, the simple simplicity of it.

She finishes quickly. She begins to arrange the suits by order. She feels infinitely better.

“Perhaps now I can sleep?” she wonders.

This seems unlikely.

“To sleep, to sleep, to sleep,” she mutters to herself. She sees a figure approach and turns to address them.

There is no one there.

She shakes her head and blinks. Nothing. Nothing there. Or so she hopes. Or so she fears. Alone.

Footsteps pacing the room, which when she looks, the empty space falls silent. Taps on the glass, which when responded to, end in an open-fronted question mark.

Gradually she returns, the realisation sitting like a lead in the middle of her thoughts. Her vision too sharp; too clear. She sees too much of what is and what should be.

A spoon in a bag of sugar.

Oven gloves on the table.

And those cards with their scuffed, uneven edges.

She shuffles and picks another card.

Ace of Diamonds. Sharp, pointed rhomboid. Uneven shape.

Shuffles. Picks again.

Ace of Spades. Large, beautiful, symmetrical shape.

Turns the pack over; Ace of Diamonds.

She begins to feel a chill through her fingers and toes.

She begins to remember.

Her eyes close. She sleeps.

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