I Promise Prose. [Currently being REMADE due to deletion.]

~Paranoia~

We've known each other long now, no? I know your flaws and your personality and you think you know mine. It has been a couple of months since we met, but we've become friends since then. At least, that is what you think we are. What if I told you that you don't know me at all? A friend of mine told me something about all of you guys and that was all it took for me to resolve to betray you.
What is that? You've always though me your friend, even when everyone was against you? Fool, they were never against you, it was simply my spell taking hold over you. Every word since my dear friend told me about you and your friends has been laced with the most subtle amount of my real feelings. They have been slowly, ever so slowly, pushing you to the edge of fear. You never knew it, for you thought me your friend, ironic isn't it?

Every time I spoke, you were hit unknowingly by my manipulative words. I fed you the subtlest hints about the others turning against you, and laced the same lies both ways. Every one of you have been pulled into this web, every one of you think I am your only friend. You think they are against you; all your former friends are trying to back stab you and only I can save you. How did this happen you ask? Why, it took quite some time for you to even know it was happening.

At first I fed those lies to you, perhaps about your friend getting along with a former enemy or siding with him against you. I did it very irregularly, perhaps once or twice a month, so you wouldn't notice my manipulative ways. Over time, you started to feel that I was that I was the object most precious to you, because everything else was surely plotting to betray you. It spread gradually through you like wild fire, first through the mind and then to the pits of your soul. It is a feeling that has clouded your judgment, unknowingly, all this time.

It is paranoia.

~Black and White~

We both know that there are those kind of people that can't see in between, that can only see in the terms of two parallel dimensions. We think these people are simple and don't have enough creativity to see the in between areas, the different points of view that compromise with their two 'conflicting' ideals, the ones they can see. Perhaps we seem them wrongly though, perhaps their really is only two points of view. My tale will explain what I mean...

---

"No, just no, I won't have her murderer go free! No!" An agonized mother of about 42 years old stood beside two relatives. One, a daughter, and the other a brother, the uncle to her child. The uncle held up the mother as she fell forward and stumbled as her heart tore itself with agony and pain. The daughter held the woman's other hand, cooing gently to her mother that everything would be alright and that her sister was in a better place. They were standing on a finely carpeted floor but the money they had been given as compensation for the young woman's murder didn't make their heart throb any less. In a courtyard nearby, a celebration of freedom was taking place, oblivious to the families pain.

A rather tall, burly man of about 26 years old sat on a chair among a group of friends and associates. He brushed a hand through his carefully groomed goatee while juggling a beer bottle in his other hand with a practiced grace. The crowd around him let out cat calls and cheers as they became intoxicated by their own drinks. The tall man didn't join in the hollers and celebration. A heavy weight weighed down on his mind, a feeling of guilt for what he had done. He had killed the previously mentioned woman's daughter after she had enraged his temper of biting fire. He put down the glass and leaned back in the chair, unable to feel comfortable because he felt so sorry for his last girlfriend.

---

So you see that their is supposed to be a 'gray area' in this situation. The man had committed murder but he felt guilty? Is that enough to make up for avoiding punishment? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, the mother would tell you that it wasn't enough while the man would tell you it was enough punishment. They both see only in black and white, based on their morals of course. Maybe 'simple' isn't too bad, maybe it affects all of us in certain situations anyway. Black and white really isn't that bad my dears, it isn't.