 What affliction is the narrator most likely suffering from?
[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. 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. The box was fastened to the vertical tongue-and-groove laths of the woodwork, not the wall. "This," Brother Partridge said, "is one of the most profound experiences of my life." "I may be able to help you," Brother Partridge said, "if you have faith and a conscience." "There must be something special about you, for your apprehension to come through miraculous intervention. Sure enough, it wasn't a hundred-dollar bill, but it was a twenty, and that was almost the same thing to me. William, you are being punished for some great sin.
 paranoid schizophrenia
 multiple personality disorder  bipolar disorder  antisocial personality disorder  paranoid schizophrenia