Projector (2018)
I was inspired by Anton Chekhov's short story “The Man in a Case.” Some people are born with a innate “case” or cultivated inside a “case.” This cases may be constructed of seemly fragile and unstable materials, like sensitvity and stabbornness in personality. With the projection of fear, anxiety and emotional fluctuations, the “cases” transform into an intangible web that they are unable to escape.
“There are plenty of people in the world, solitary by temperament, who try to retreat into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail. Perhaps it is an instance of atavism, a return to the period when the ancestor of man was not yet a social animal and lived alone in his den, or perhaps it is only one of the diversities of human character -- who knows?”
“His bed had curtains. When he went to bed he covered his head over; it was hot and stuffy; the wind battered on the closed doors; there was a droning noise in the stove and a sound of sighs from the kitchen -- ominous sighs. . . . And he felt frightened under the bed-clothes. He was afraid that something might happen, that Afanasy might murder him, that thieves might break in, and so he had troubled dreams all night, and in the morning, when we went together to the high-school, he was depressed and pale, and it was evident that the high-school full of people excited dread and aversion in his whole being, and that to walk beside me was irksome to a man of his solitary temperament.”
They will not be “saved” by anything unless they confirm their psychological security established by superiority and hierarchy.