Misunderstood

A story about a man's journey into insanity. Originally posted on my Wattpad.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by all things death. Nobody knew about this, so everybody thought I was a perfect kid. I did well in school, and I had quite a few friends. Even though I kept to myself outside of school, I enjoyed being around my classmates.
Since I did talk a lot, I'm surprised that nobody noticed that I purposefully made my voice a little lower than normal. I did that because I thought death was a real person and that he had a low voice. I even went as far as playing with Death, and believing that I was Satan. Well, I played this game until the 5th grade, when one day my mom walked into my room and noticed me drawing pentagrams all over my body. I was grounded for 2 months after that, but I wasn't asked about what I was doing, so that was good.
During my final days with Death,  I became fearful of another person talking to me. Like, I already shared a lot with Death. On my last day with Death, God started talking to me. The thing that confused me was that I was never religious. I was very confused at this point. After Death left, I spent the remainder of my 5th grade year with just God.
Once 5th grade was over, I started to have a lot more anger, and I had no idea why. I even started to become paranoid. So, when the day came for God to have me meet new people, I was VERY scared. But, when the day came, God introduced me to Jim, Billy, and John. I saw John a lot, but he never talked. Jim liked to scare me a lot. Billy talked a lot, but he lived in my head, because I never saw him.
One time, when I was talking to Billy, Jim came into the room while eating a human hand. Jim liked to eat humans a lot, but he never cared to devour me. After that human hand incident though, I never saw him again. But, sometimes, he still talks to me. Well, they're more like threats, but you know what I mean.
After Jim left, I became depressed for a while. I had nothing to do during recess anymore, because I would always watch Jim scare my friends.
One day, after Jim left, my teacher came over to me while I was crying. She asked me why I was sad. I told her that I missed Jim. Her face showed that she was concerned. After what seemed like a good solid 5 minutes, she said "But there's no Jim in this class." I said, "Yeah, there was! God gave him to me! He scared everybody here!" This happened to set my teacher off, and she called my mom in. They talked while the class worked on something I can't remember.
After 8 minutes and 3.7 seconds, my teacher called me out to the hallway. My mom told me that I was going to start therapy after school. And that's what exactly happened.
I explained to the therapist all of what I've been going through. After I was done, she called an asylum. All I knew about them was that they housed crazy people.
Am I crazy? No. I can't be! Ever since I've came here, more people have come and went. I have a pet gorilla named Suzy. She always tells me that the doctors are right, and that I have schizo. No I don't! Besides, all these medicines do is take away my friends. Even Suzy seems to be fading! We just all have our own little worlds!

A journal entry:
6/15/1998
Dear journal,
Hi, my name is Danny. I've had many friends in my life. But, they all went away by the time I was 18. Sometimes, Jim would talk to me, I would see John wave to me, and Suzy walks in the rain forest behind the asylum that nobody else sees but me, but it's not as bad as I was since I was little. At least now, I'm on my last 2 years of high school, and I hope to start Driver's Ed after this year of high school, so that's good. I can only assume that the drugs are slowly killing schizo because...
A deer just walked up behind me...there's no way a deer could pass through that electrical wire though.

Reviews

[Jessica Jaufmann]

Very intriguing. I like you lack of detail, because it gives the reader a chance to see this in their heads. Yet you give a piece of detail that makes me think it would work well if you incorporated it into the entire story.
"After 8 minutes and 3.7 seconds, my teacher called me out to the hallway. My mom told me that I was going to start therapy after school. And that's what exactly happened."
It seems that rather than just schizophrenia, our narrator may have hyperthymesia as well, which is sort of OCD where the person remembers the smallest details as if they matter the most. I think if you implemented more of these little details you think the narrator would notice, it would make for a more convincing character. Let me know if you do an update, I'd love to take a look at another draft.