Folie de doute

Published 'Sierra Heaven' 1995

I am accused of gullibility. Yet it will not stretch into believing that anybody can be as paranoiac as Sandall.

I first encountered his existence at school, where both of us are cruelly bullied: a fact which fails to bring us closer, simply seeing each other as distant co-victims, too crestfallen to taken things further than that. Yet I can easily imagine Sandall telling me of the awful dreads instilled in him by a supposedly impending torture worse than having the fingernails ripped out one by one. I suspect, too, that he in turn empathises with my similar dreads, hoping the effort of cultivating me as an acquaintance, let alone as a soulmate ... is a sign of single-mindedness? A belief system unsaddled from paranoia? Or simply a tortured admission of schizophrenia?

After all, my name, if you can credit it, is Sandall.