Janusz, Malkavian, coroner/pathologist trainee

My name is Janusz Paul Sadowski-Lance and I have paranoid schizophrenia. Stranger still, I'm also technically dead. It's always been just my dad and I. My mom moved back to Poland not long after I was born. My life was still good here though. Dad's a big wig coroner for the city. He gets paid well. I remember when seeing the corpses at the morgue would freak me out, now I am in medical school and interning at his office. I'm really happy about that, and he is too. We spend a lot of time together.

I developed schizophrenia over a span of nine years with the most severe symptoms appearing when I was twenty seven. Prior to that, there were signs my thoughts were heading out of normal range but since it was all confined to the privacy of my mind, I just ignored the red flags and no one else could tell I I was different. I can't think of anything that happened in my life that could have caused me to crack like I did. My childhood was pretty happy, and my relatives, friends, and dad were all wonderful and supportive of me. I do wonder what mom was like, though. Maybe it's her fault.

Around nineteen to twenty one, when I started my sophomore year of college I suddenly became  interested in the notion of complexity theory and fractals. In no time at alI, I obsessively believed I would discover a fantastic mathematical principle that would unlock the code to understanding the way material and conceptual systems self organize around us. I stopped focusing on my studies at university, my grades dropped, and I became totally absorbed by my delusion. I thought I would be incredibly famous for solving the mysteries of the universe. You see, no matter my failures, I always told myself I was on the verge of my miraculous discovery, even if the mathematical fractals I sought were beyond my comprehension. I just believed in my heart I could figure out this riddle without having the necessary knowledge. I never told anyone about these plans, less they steal my idea.

At about the age of twenty two I had my first significant paranoid episode. I was on vacation with my girlfriend at Heckscher State Park. We had rented a cabin together for the weekend. It started as a lovely getaway. Halfway through the first night, my girlfriend and I were outside and just listening to the radio and relaxing. It was then it suddenly seemed to me that the songs playing were communicating secret messages. The lyrics were urging me to take action or people would be hurt at the campgrounds. I desperately tried to figure out the codes but it was like a thousand televisions were set to static and fired up at once. I couldn't  make out any details. I became enraged by this. I turned the volume to max on the speaker and was screaming at it, demanding the interference to stop. Before we went to bed, I barricaded the door to our cabin with furniture so no one could hurt us. My girlfriend could not convince me of any different. I really believed we were in mortal danger.

The paranoia returned later that year when I hurt my back slipping on ice. I had to go to the university clinic and there I accused the nurse of trying to hurt me with medicine that would make my pain permanent. The rational part of me knew it wasn't possible, but another part really wanted to believe she'd do that. I first started hearing voices around then too. My initial thought was that my apartment neighbors were being extra loud or that people around me were just talking, but then several voices spoke when I was sure I was alone. The voices were mostly comforting and positive with me, offering advice to my distressing thoughts or praise. When they weren't kind, though, they said things to get me to harm myself and others in ways I could never repeat.

My big psychotic break came right before medical school was starting at age twenty six. At that time, I had become certain I was being followed around. At first it was just one person, a tall, dark figure that I'd see lurking in the shadows. I saw the figure everywhere. It didn't scare me at all. It was actually kind of pleasant to see it and the hallucination was often accompanied by the smell of wisteria and verbena. In time, though, I stopped seeing the shadow and I felt a little sad. Later on, mysterious agents would arrive in its stead. I didn't know who they were or why they followed me but they were always watching. I hated them. Nowhere was safe from their gaze. In my delusion, I suspected I was caught in a psychic war and the agents were studying me. They wanted to suppress my psychic abilities. I worried so much about them I stopped eating and sleeping and withdrew from my friends, family, and girlfriend. When people took notice of my odd behaviors I just brushed it off as school stress. But, finally, I couldn't take it anymore.  Consumed by delusion and paranoia, I attempted suicide by swallowing pesticides.

I ate the pesticides till sick and full on the poison. I gagged them down. The chemicals burnt my tongue and made me blind. I was excited and sure I was about to die as paralysis hit my body.

I thought; my psychic powers won't belong to anyone but me. The agents of the war can't torment me if I'm dead. There won't be anyone to watch. Not anymore. I'm free.

That's when she came to me. I was losing consciousness, choking on poison and vomit. I had taken my last breath...

I smell her, sweet, wisteria and verbena.

Then the voice:

"Not how did he die, but how did he live?

Not what did he gain, but what did he give?"

Searing pain tears my throat.

Warm chestnut liquid running like a red flash on the tile floor, it pools and spreads a massive bloody mess. I blink through the pain as my body screams to be let die.

She grabs the back of my head, by my hair. It's long and matting with my blood. I feel her sharp nails on my scalp.

"Am I beautiful? Tell me I'm fucking beautiful!" My head is shaken back and forth with violent force. Her eyes, I see through my own dim real, are like a viper, deadly and evil.

She slams my head against the floor. I'm vomiting, I can't see. The world spins and all I know is me wretching up my putrid sick.

Her blood comes then. She forces it to my lips and I drink it like a sick kitten. I finally die and she just watches laughing.

There was a penned note, some obscure book's quote left by my corpse. I found it the following evening when I came to.

I think death must be beautiful.

I didn't want to wake up. I was having a much better time when I was asleep. This feels like a nightmare. My apartment is so quiet and empty it hurts. But, I know better. The agents are still out there watching me.

I clean my blood off the floor and call my girlfriend.

"My dear,

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.

Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.

For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.

~ Falsely yours"

Kurt Monahan, family friend

Chief of police assistant, San Diego