The Radio Station in My Head

The voices start before I'm fully awake, seeping through the thin membrane between dream and consciousness like radio static finding its frequency. Today they're discussing my grocery list,apparently, I shouldn't buy milk because the cashier will know. Know what? They don't specify, but the urgency in their tone makes my stomach clench with a too familiar dread.

I sit up in my bed, holding my sweaty palms against my ears, but the sound doesn't come from outside. It never does. It's like having a television in your skull that someone else controls the remote for, switching channels at will, volume fluctuating without warning.

The bathroom mirror reflects a stranger wearing my face. Behind me, in the reflection, I catch movement,a shadow that shouldn't exist, a figure that dissolves the moment I turn around. My hands shake as I splash cold water on my face, and the voices comment on this too, noting every tremor, every shallow breath, like sports commentators calling the most mundane game ever played.

Breakfast becomes a negotiation. The voices have opinions about everything: the eggs are poisoned, the coffee maker is recording my conversations, the newspaper delivery person is documenting my routine. I know,somewhere in the rational corner of my mind that still functions,that none of this is real. But knowing and believing are different countries, and I'm stuck in the border between them.

The walk to the bus stop feels like being followed by an invisible parade. Footsteps echo mine, conversations happen just out of earshot, and I catch fragments that might be about me. The woman with the red coat glances my way, and the voices whisper that she's been watching me for weeks. I want to tell them to shut up, but speaking to them in public is a luxury I can't afford. At least not yet.

On the bus, the conspiracy happens in real-time. The driver takes a different route,clearly deliberate. The passengers are positioned strategically, and their casual conversations are coded messages. My phone buzzes, and the voices insist it's them, the watchers, tracking my location. I turn it off, but the paranoia has already taken root, growing like weeds in the garden of my mind.

Work is a minefield of misinterpretation. My colleague's innocent question about the weekend sounds loaded with hidden meaning. The way she emphasizes certain words, the pause before she speaks, the way she looks at me,it's all evidence of something larger, something coordinated. I respond carefully, weighing each word, because everything I say is being analyzed, documented, filed away for future use.

The meeting room feels like a courtroom. Every presentation slide might contain subliminal messages, every laugh from my coworkers sounds forced, performed for my benefit. The voices provide running commentary, pointing out inconsistencies, warning me about who to trust. I take notes furiously, not about the meeting, but about the behaviors I'm observing, the patterns I'm detecting.

Lunch too is impossible. The cafeteria hums with conspiracy,conversations stop when I approach, resume when I pass. The food looks normal, but the voices remind me about chemicals, about mind control, about the slow poisoning of dissidents. I buy a banana and eat it while walking, checking over my shoulder, counting the people who seem to be following the same route.

The afternoon brings a new development: the building's security cameras are definitely focused on me more than usual. I can feel their electronic eyes tracking my movements, recording my habits, building a profile. The voices become more insistent, more urgent, overlapping until they sound like a crowded room where everyone's talking at once.

By evening, the world has transformed into a stage set built specifically for my surveillance. The bus driver is the same one from the morning…impossible, unless it's intentional. The passengers carry newspapers with headlines that feel personally relevant. Street lights flicker in patterns that might be code. Every coincidence is confirmation, every random event is orchestrated.

At home, I check the locks three times, close the curtains, and sit in the chair that gives me the best view of all entrances. The voices settle into their evening routine, cataloging the day's evidence, planning tomorrow's precautions. I make lists of who to avoid, which routes to take, how to spot the signs I missed today.

The television news feels like it's speaking directly to me. The anchor's gestures are too precise, the stories too relevant to my situation. I turn it off, but the voices continue the broadcast, providing their own version of current events, their own interpretation of what's really happening in the world.

Night brings no peace. The voices don't sleep,they simply change shifts, new ones taking over, continuing the endless commentary on my existence. I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to them debate whether tomorrow will be the day they finally close in, whether I've been careful enough, whether there's anywhere left to hide.

Sleep comes in nits and bits, interrupted by the sound of my own name being called, by conversations happening in empty rooms, by the certainty that something is about to happen. I dream of being chased through corridors that collapse and change, of hiding in rooms that don't exist, of voices that follow me even into unconsciousness.

The morning light brings no relief, only the return of the full chorus, ready to begin another day of surveillance, another day of decoding the world's hidden messages, another day of living in a reality that no one else can see.

Tomorrow, I'll take my medication and pretend the voices are just neurons misfiring, that the patterns are just coincidence, that the world is exactly as mundane as everyone claims it is. But tonight, in the space between waking and sleeping, I know the truth: I'm the center of something vast and coordinated, something that requires constant vigilance, constant fear, constant listening to the radio station in my head that never stops broadcasting.

They call it schizophrenia.

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I saw a prompt that read “Write a story from a POV of someone with some kind of mental illness but only mention it at the end”. So here's my entry.⁠ Ciao.♡