 What affliction is the narrator most likely suffering from?
Charity Case By JIM HARMON Illustrated by [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1959. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Certainly I see things that aren't there and don't say what my voice says—but how can I prove that I don't have my health? When he began his talk with "You got your health, don't you?" Not if you believe me. The first thing I can remember, the start of all this, was when I was four or five somebody was soiling my bed for me. For punishment, he locked me in a windowless room and told me to sit still until he came back. It wasn't so bad a punishment, except that when Dad closed the door, the light turned off and I was left there in the dark. Being four or five, I didn't know any better, so I thought Dad made it dark to add to my punishment. Because they were real, I talked about them as if they were real, and I almost earned a bunk in the home for retarded children until I got smart enough to keep the beasts to myself. My mother and father must have been glad when I was sent away to reform school after my thirteenth birthday party, the one If you believe any of this at all, you'll see why it couldn't be me who did the stealing. Some skin-and-bones character I didn't know struggled out of his seat, amening. As soon as I got cleaned up, I was going to have dinner in a good restaurant, and I was going to order such expensive food and leave such a large tip for the waiter and send one to the chef that they were going to think I was rich, and some executive with some brokerage firm would see me and say to himself, "Hmm, executive material. I beg your pardon, sir—" just like the razor-blade comic-strip ads in the old magazines that Frankie the Pig sells three for a quarter. Following the wallboard, I went down the side of the room and behind the last row of chairs, closer, closer, and halfway up the room again to the entrance—the entrance and the little wooden box fastened to the wall beside it. A single would be creased or worn. The box was fastened to the vertical tongue-and-groove laths of the woodwork, not the wall.
 paranoid schizophrenia
 multiple personality disorder  bipolar disorder  antisocial personality disorder  paranoid schizophrenia