LETTER FROM A MADWOMAN

Dear Psychic Pam

I was waiting for my little yellow bus today but a white one turned up instead. Things like that throw me off balance. Do you think it means something? Is it a sign that things are moving on without me? Our usual driver sat behind the wheel and spun my ticket out of the machine but there was someone in my seat. Somehow, the day is getting out of control. My hands keep attracting my attention; they look different – much, much older than they were yesterday, though I haven’t really noticed them for a while...so maybe it all started weeks ago, months even. Do you think it’s possible that I’ve been abducted or something? I mean surely I would’ve noticed these changes.

It’s all driving me crazy and I’m annoyed at myself for being paranoid, but when I saw that the big clock on the Pearce Institute was obviously new I nearly fell off the pavement; it was smashed before, wasn’t it? I’m scared to look in the mirror in case there’s a stranger there. So I’ve locked myself in my room – I don’t have a mirror in here but I need to avert my eyes from the glass doors of the unit. The news is normal, I think; it’s only me who’s a bit bonkers. I watched Who’s Line is it Anyway and got a shock when they put on the alien masks; there was a flicker of recognition in the back of my mind. If I’d known I was mad when I was over at the hospital visiting my friend I would’ve popped into A&E for a quick brain scan. Do you think I need one? Should I just get a taxi over there now, do you think? 

I know you can't really answer that.

Oh I don’t know what to do for the best so that’s why I’m writing to you Pam; you always help me to see the real world. I think I’m going blind – I have to keep rubbing my eyes to get rid of the film that makes everything blurred. I know I’ve asked you before but do you think it’s possible that I might’ve been taken? I don’t know how else to explain all the goings-on; I can hear music too – it comes from all directions at once...that must mean that it’s really on the inside, doesn’t it? My feet tap to it, honestly they do – when they think I’m not looking. When I catch them they freeze. It’s just occurred to me that it might be a circulation problem; that affects the extremities, doesn’t it? Are your eyes extremities too?

I know you’ll forgive me rambling on (you always do) and I hope you can recognise all this as something – hopefully nothing serious, and offer some advice. Even the coats hanging up behind my door seem to be twitching, and the cat has totally disappeared...and this is the tenth floor of a flat! Though I hear her sometimes. She wouldn’t take food from me the other day; do you think she recognised that my hands were those of a stranger? Who am I Pam? Do I sound different to you?

Signed:  Very Worried in Glasgow (Isabel)

Ps; I’ll be waiting by the door for the postman.