I'm the Bad Guy - Natalie Blaszak

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. From left to right, shirts hung on a rack to make a perfect gradient. A ruler placed precisely in the top right-hand drawer of the desk was to be used whenever any clothes were taken out to ensure that each black hanger was separated by exactly one inch. Just below the shirts laid pants in cubbies, all folded the same way, positioned directly on top of one another so that one could feasibly determine which pair was which. From lightest to darkest, the pants had their set order as well. The room was a spotless shade of white with a beautiful accent wall holding straight vertical lines of string lights and photos consisting of family and friends taking the shape of a square on the wall. The bed that rested beneath was flawlessly made with an aesthetically pleasing color combination of pastel pinks and blues and a touch of lavender and the blankets were perfectly flattened to show no signs of creases or bumps.. 

Sitting at the desk on the left side of her bedroom, Lorraine, a woman in her mid twenties, routinely scrolls through her laptop looking through her emails for the fifth time of the morning. Five times in the morning and five times at night, she opens her emails a total of ten times each day. Systematically continuing through her day, Lorraine makes a peanut butter sandwich in her white kitchen until 12:00, reads the first 200 pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on her white couch until 3:00, takes a nap until 5:00, and prepares, eats, and cleans up a salad until 7:00. She then gets ready for bed until 8:00 and lies awake until 9:00. Lorraine wakes up at 9:00 and goes through her day the same way. Every Wednesday, once running low on groceries, she reserves ten minutes to order groceries via Postmates that will be delivered to her house. Less contact with strangers equals less contact with the bad, she thinks to herself. 

From the time she turned 15, Lorraine’s OCD progressively got worse. The disorder began with color coding everything, whether it be her school notes or her closet, which wasn’t really any worry. However, once she turned 18, Lorraine began sensing germs all around her when she would go to certain places like concerts filled with people or even packed supermarkets and had to wait until the clock struck a certain hour--like 5:00 or 6:00--to begin a specific task in her day. By 19, she felt like going to any public place increased her chances of bumping into someone who has harmed her before, and would leave her with an internal feeling of uncleanliness. Mental contamination is what they call it. From the time she turned 18, Lorraine’s mother and father pushed her to go to therapy, but Lorraine wouldn’t say “yes” no matter how hard they tried. Her parents eventually gave up, but still send her money every month because they knew that without any therapy, Lorraine wouldn’t be able to physically interact with anyone. With the money her parents sent her, she rented an apartment and began living independently, well almost independently.

Lorraine was lying awake in her bed waiting for the clock to strike 9:00 so she could finally fall asleep. Peeking over to the digital clock on her nightstand, she noticed it read 8:47. "33, 32, 31, 30," she whispered the seconds to herself as a way to pass the time. "29, 28, 27, 26, 25--". Two loud bangs coming from her apartment door disrupted her counting. Lorraine sat up in fear of what it was and waited for another sound, but several minutes passed and nothing else was heard. She lay back in her bed and began counting the seconds again. "60, 59, 58, 57, 56--." She was disrupted again, but not by any loud bangs at the front door, rather what sounded like a window cracking open and a floorboard creaking. Realizing that her door was open, Lorraine’s heart started beating faster and faster. She quickly got out of her bed, her legs almost giving out from the adrenaline that coursed through her body. Moving as fast as she could to the door without making any noise, she shut it. While pushing it shut, she noticed it wasn’t closing fully. Looking up at the side of the door, her heart dropped. She noticed a large gloved hand wrapped around the door, preventing it from closing. Lorraine’s heart skipped a beat when the door was shoved open and a figure covered in black stomped in throwing her to the ground. The intruder held up a fist ready to knock her out, when the sound of police sirens filled the air outside the building. The figure looked outside the window in Lorraine’s room and cursed out as--what she could now identify as a man from the voice--he ran out of the room and exited through a window opposite of the police outside. Still pinned on the floor from her fear, Lorraine stared at her ceiling in disbelief of what just happened. Another knock as her door made her jump.

“Lorraine it’s your neighbor. I heard someone banging on your door and saw someone dressed in black so I called the cops. I just came over here to make sure you are okay.”

She stood up with a blank face and walked over to the front door, but instead of opening it, she sat with her back pressed up against it. 

“I’m fine, you can go away,” Lorraine responded. At this point she was not feeling nervous, scared, shaky, or anything for that matter. She just sat there expressionless. 

“Are you su--” 

“Yes.” Lorraine cut the neighbor off mid-sentence.

“Okay,” the neighbor said reluctantly and walked away. 

Looking straight ahead at nothing, Lorraine stood up and walked into the kitchen. She sat in a chair repeating to herself: “He’s the bad guy, he’s the bad guy, he’s the bad guy.” Five minutes of repeating that phrase passed and the police sirens had faded off in the distance as they drove away. She washed her hands ten times as she sensed the feeling of uncleanliness spreading from her hands, up through her arms, and to her legs, until it consumed her whole body. The sentence she was repeating then changed. “I’m the bad guy, I’m the bad guy, I’m the bad guy,” she now repeated to herself. “I’m the bad guy, I’m the bad guy, I’m the bad guy,” she chanted as she stood up from the chair, grabbed a knife from a drawer, and walked out of her apartment. She whispered the phrase to herself, dragging the knife along the wall of the hallway. Reaching the elevator, she walked into it and turned around. The elevator doors closed in front of her as she spoke the same four words: "I'm the bad guy, I'm the bad guy, I'm the bad guy."