Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Paranoia
    Paranoia
    Paranoia
    Ebook96 pages1 hour

    Paranoia

    By Plamen Chetelyazov

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Paranoia is a profound exploration of the human psyche, delving into themes of existential dread, societal alienation, and the struggle for self-identity. Through a blend of philosophical musings, dark introspection, and sharp social critique, Plamen Chetelyazov crafts a narrative that is as haunting as it is thought-provoking.

    Set against the backdrop of everyday life, the protagonist's journey is a constant battle with internal and external realities—realities that are fragmented, distorted, and often feel like illusions. The novel challenges conventional perceptions of time, space, and consciousness, as it blurs the lines between what is real and imagined. Chetelyazov's narrative voice is poetic, raw, and unfiltered, offering readers an intense emotional experience that speaks to universal human fears and desires.

    In Paranoia, the author doesn't shy away from difficult questions: What does it mean to truly exist? How do societal constructs shape our identities? Is there any meaning in life, or are we simply navigating an absurd existence? The protagonist's search for answers is a journey of self-destruction, enlightenment, and, ultimately, a confrontation with the inescapable void that lies within us all.

    This is not a novel that seeks to comfort; instead, it challenges its readers to embrace discomfort and face the darkest corners of their own consciousness. For those willing to grapple with the existential dilemmas posed in Paranoia, the reward is an intellectually rich and emotionally stirring experience—one that lingers long after the final page is turned.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPlamen Chetelyazov
    Release dateOct 11, 2012
    ISBN9781301819362
    Paranoia
    Author

    Plamen Chetelyazov

    Plamen Chetelyazov was born in 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 in the museum sphere in Plovdiv. Before his current role, he was a probationer at Darik Radio, a lifestyle journalist at Mylife magazine, and an editor at Anonce newspaper. His literary pieces have been featured 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 showcasing the talents of five emerging writers from around the world, including Plamen Chetelyazov.

    Related to Paranoia

    Related ebooks

    Coming of Age Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Fantasy

      Nov 20, 2021

      Sweet Fantasy
      8 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Morbidity & the Miniature

      May 11, 2018

      Morbidity & the Miniature
      14 min read

    • Article

      Retriever of Souls

      Nov 25, 2021

      What they don’t say is that, sometimes God will call you to the wilderness, gesture toward the trees, and then, hang back and wave you on alone. —“Prayer for the Wretched Among Us” from The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded At nig

      18 min read

    • Article

      Zeno’s Paradox

      May 30, 2024

      Zeno’s Paradox
      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2023

      1. Wine-makers say it’s the complex flavorcreated by the singular terrain of place: the kinds of minerals in the soilfiltered through the soft pulse and coil of earthworms; the curl of fog that snakesaround blushed grapes like wisps of smoke; the tas

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2022

      If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say itenough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic, I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting, slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really

      5 min read

    • Article

      Skunk City

      Nov 25, 2022

      Skunk City
      3 min read

    • Article

      Sexual Tension

      Jun 5, 2023

      Sexual Tension
      13 min read

    • Article

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • Article

      A Huxian’s Guide to Seduction Revenge Immortality

      Jul 1, 2024

      Once a year I give myself permission to indulge in real tenderness. I dip an overripe fig in honey and eat it with yogurt. Then I allow some man to worship me. I make him go down on two knees and pray. “Pray for what?” he’d whisper. “Pray for whateve

      31 min read

    • Article

      Collins Ferry Landing

      Jul 1, 2020

      for my father Only rivers bottom out like this.Only rivers bottom out with this kind of conviction.Not humans, or, at least, not humans asindisputably human as you were,trapped in consciousness’s surplus, exilic,animalized absurdity, writhing in its

      5 min read

    • Article

      In The Palace Of Forgetting

      Jan 1, 2023

      In the spring of 2019, poet Matthew Kelsey suffered the loss of his mother. Less than a year later, he would lose his father to COVID-19. The following is a poem-interview between Keith Leonard (questions) and Matthew Kelsey (answers) that began in J

      12 min read

    • Article

      Reading In The Dark

      Nov 25, 2021

      Odilon Redon, The Egg, 1885. lithograph in black on ivory china paper laid down on ivory wove paper, 17.25 × 12.36 inches (sheet), art institute chicago PICTURE ME: seven years old, curled shell-like around a book, oblivious to anything beyond the bo

      11 min read

    • Article

      Snow day & Other Poems

      Nov 1, 2024

      I set a tea kettle on top of a snowman.I’m pretending I don’t have laundry to do,that the drywall isn’t crackedin the bedroom, that I’m stillthe sixteenth inch thick bar of steelI was in my twenties, when if you bent meI sprang back to where I’d been

      4 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      Spellcheck

      Jan 1, 2019

      Whose history I do not know. I do know I’ve been e-upbraided for my fast and loose spelling of Woden, the god whose last worshipper must have slipped under the sod during the medieval period, somewhere in the 10th century—imagine those bog-soaked des

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Elegy for the Last Male Northern White Rhino

      Jun 1, 2019

      Poor Breton, still trying to installa burning murmur in our mindswhich causes of course problemsat security like what doesn’t? Fruitis explosive. So’s any kind of fluid,especially tears, especially amniotic,especially salamanders. In previous centuri

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Essay On Faith

      May 1, 2022

      exordium While sound and seaworthy, I confess a life of false confessions, false hearts, ample contempt for bench warrants charging me with failures to appear. Let what interest death’s elbow grease won’t erase compound, judgments sealed in my ova, m

      4 min read

    • Article

      Coming Up For Air

      May 7, 2020

      Coming Up For Air
      4 min read

    • Article

      Silence: Oxygen For The Soul

      Nov 14, 2019

      Silence: Oxygen For The Soul
      3 min read

    • Article

      Family History in Abstract VIII & Other Poems

      Nov 1, 2024

      from The Philadelphia Inquirer, 14 Jul 1887, p. 4 A Carolina Romance Death of a Man Whose Life Was Blighted by Love A lie bloated in Carolina sun like a plum overripe, still clung but dreaming of release, the embrace of earth, marriage of dirt & seed

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Five Poems
      5 min read

    • Article

      Fragrant

      Jan 18, 2022

      Fragrant
      5 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Paranoia

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Paranoia - Plamen Chetelyazov

      PARANOIA

      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 there are only street kids and very old men. The young people in this town age rapidly, imperceptibly collapsing into old age or dotage. The good ones age because they can taste the beginning of the human circle, they can sip from the emotions of lost innocence, and eventually, they just wither away in the utopia, like the shriveled mulberries from Belopolene village in late summer. The bad ones dotage because they are immune to emotions and think only of mischief. They drink, cheat, and fight all day long because there is nothing else to do. And so, in Ivaylovgrad, people are either very old or just kids.

      Grandmothers grow potted lemon trees on the stairs of old brick blocks - buildings that smell of wine barrels in the basements and have roofs made of black asphalt. Grandfathers sprawl their stiff bodies on lazy benches under the shade of pomegranate trees, resting with their walking sticks and sipping thoughtfully from homemade rakia. And the children - not the bad adults, but the real kids - for them, Ivaylovgrad is a paradise, a Wonderland. In this place, the worms of time have eaten away the space, creating huge holes that

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1