Paranoia

By Plamen Chetelyazov

"Paranoia" delves into my primitive complexes, innermost emotions, and shattered dreams. It tells of my escape from the elemental impulses and societal clichés. Along the emotional path, I confront the unbearable hypocrisy, the self-destructive self-denial and the insanity. The teenage style is rough, the novel is inspired by usual vanity and common depressions but it remains my personal revelation. The Bulgarian publishing house LiterNet published "Paranoia" in 2007. However, I have decided to translate it in search of understanding and sympathy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Plamen Chetelyazov
• Release date: Oct 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301819362

Plamen Chetelyazov

Plamen Chetelyazov was born on November 29, 1982 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He studied at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia and at the University of Plovdiv. In 2005 he participated in the programs for cultural exchange between Bulgaria and the United States of America and spent the summer in Seaside Heights, NJ. Plamen works as an expert and publicist for the Regional Museum of History, Plovdiv. Before joining the Museum, he was a probationer at Darik Radio, lifestyle journalist at Mylife magazine and an editor at Anonce newspaper. His literary pieces have appeared in the magazines Egoist, Kanape and the Bulgarian edition of Glamour. Plamen is the author of two novels, Imago and Paranoia, the latter being published in Bulgarian by LiterNet in 2007. In 2015 the American publishing house Neverland Publishing released Flaws of Oblivion - an anthology of poetry, prose and photography that showcases the talents of five emerging writers from around the world including Plamen Chetelyazov.

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Paranoia

Plamen Chetelyazov

Copyright 2011 by Plamen Chetelyazov

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Introduction

Paranoia delves into my primitive complexes, innermost emotions, and shattered dreams. It tells of my escape from the elemental impulses and societal clichés. Along the emotional path, I confront the unbearable hypocrisy, the self-destructive self-denial and the insanity. The teenage style is rough, the novel is inspired by usual vanity and common depressions but it remains my personal revelation. The Bulgarian publishing house LiterNet published Paranoia in 2007. However, I have decided to translate it in search of understanding and sympathy.

Chapter 1: A Spiritual Blast

They say it's New Year's Eve, but why? Every moment, every single second, the Earth completes one full lap around the Sun. That is, of course, compared to the previous flash when it flew into the Big Bang after-party rhythm through this very location of our solar system. Besides, there's the theory of matter's continuous expansion. It basically says that despite all the liposuctions of the Bulgarian pop-folk stars, their bodies grow by thousands of miles in space every single second due to vanity and sex amortization. Of course, they can't detect this growth despite spending hours in front of the mirror, wondering what clothes and cosmetics can hide the cellulite's furrows, exposing their faded butts. The matter increases proportionally, you know. If we prove this theory, we can use it as an excuse for men's rounded wine-skin stomachs. The proof will also mean that New Year's Eve does not exist because the Earth never crosses the same location in space, which means it has rushed across that matter of time striving to its end. And if so, there's no New Year, no end of the fiscal year, no taxes - so there's more beer, vodka, synthetic experiments, and all kinds of porn. Right now, I'm surrounded by these goods, the master achievement, the masterpiece of millions, billions of years of evolution of some proteins due to some sort of radiation. But the only thing I care about is that New Year's Eve is an illusion, a lie - just an abstract system created by people to watch over their own lives, which are constantly slipping out of control.

I can dimly hear a digitally degenerated voice counting down with Death's heavy timbre from Terry Pratchett's novels.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Here comes my favorite moment. The lights fade, the music subsides, and the crowd of people who are intolerant of their own emotions and vocal cords melt into the darkness. This only takes half a second, but thanks to the shock my head received when I fell from a pear tree in my village as a kid, or probably due to the chemical compounds that my heart is pumping through my boiling and gurgling blood – spirit bullets that affect all nerves and create a real brain diversion to blow up the mind – thanks to something, right now, I have the gift to slow time around me. Maybe I can stop the sense of proportional growth. I manage to escape from the prison of these dimensions just to distinguish the matter of time from the matter of existence, like a sunbeam that I can obstruct with my hand. Just before the digital chaos explodes in the columns with hundreds of lasers and spotlights, a few seconds before the people start to roar eagerly, appeased because they have a reason to be primitive, at that very moment, I feel how the Earth takes a deep breath. I feel the warmth of thousands of human bodies around me – those who have sheltered their minds here at this party on the winter night. I hear the falling of every graceful snowflake just before the snow makes it impersonal. I have enough time to fly, I can go up to the mountain, slip into a dark den, curl up on the wet moss next to the huge, hairy torso of a hibernating bear just to watch the white steam that the animal is exhaling with its powerful lungs until I dissolve myself to touch the stars. We can do all of that just for a second! We have all the time in the world, but we are unable to spend it because we do not realize how to obey the non-physical matter to us.

Happy New Year! BOOM! And BOOM! And BOOM! And BOOM! And BOOM!

And then come the savage shouts and screams that tear apart universal harmony. Twisted outpouring of human passion. Bright lights blast my eyes. I no longer need my conscious mind. It's time for it to sleep, to rest. My head recoils from the explosion's wave that wipes out the hall. My body stutters in an attempt to read the message from the digital genius behind the DJ's console. This destroyer of my moments of timelessness, this ephemeral prophet, this fake Buddha! Some people wave their hands and honor his greatness, others embrace each other, inspired by the Samaritan love imposed by digital and synthetic substances, and then there are those who just drink to celebrate the moment when everyone yearns for an illusory new beginning. No - I don't need my conscious mind. It dreams music, sings in its sleep the Peace Orchestra's Who Am I?, roams with the phlegmatic super-rumble of frank sadness, an absolute personification of human helplessness. My arms feel disconnected, my head tilts, my feet stagger willfully. My body shakes with fiery rage in a pseudo-native dance, but even with my eyelids tightly closed, I can still see the crooked shadows of those around me. My autopilot suggests absolute pleasure thoroughly soaked, but my mind is no longer here - it is silently dreaming nonexistent memories of happier reveries.

Chapter 2: Self-determination

Childhood memories are often shrouded in shadows, and some of those shadows are cast by fire. For a long time, I kept my clearest memories in the drawers of my dreams, memories that took me back to the town of Ivaylovgrad.

We moved to my mother's birthplace when I was three years old. This wasn't my parents' choice. The year was 1985, and the madness of ripe socialism was consuming people's lives in the same way that the ruthlessness of greedy goons consumes lives today. Ivaylovgrad is a small town on the south side of the Rhodope mountains, where the Mediterranean breeze caresses the shaggy slopes of Orpheus's mountain and summer whispers to winter. Ivaylovgrad is a magical place - at least it is for me. Many others consider it cursed because