How could I war with myself over cutting yet need it so badly to breathe?
I gritted my teeth so hard my gums pulsed then I shoved my arm into the hot spray of water to wash my cut. I stifled the howl begging to erupt from me. The pain was hot and it sank so far down into my bones.
Finally, the bleeding slowed and I turned the water off so I could get out. I wrapped one towel around my body and a washcloth around my arm where I’d cut. The razor was clutched close to my heart as I held my hand over the knot in my towel.
When I stepped into the bedroom, Caesar sat on the bed, his shoulders pulled low and his gaze fixed on the carpet. It made my core thrum when I looked at him but my heart felt heavy and twisted in my chest.
“I’m sleeping in the other woom tonight,” I told him as I headed out of the door. His thick brows gathered in and he scrubbed his jaw with his large hand.
“Brook, what we did…”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I snapped, cutting him off. The sting from rejection was far worse than any cut I could have ever dealt myself. Still, being in Caesar’s space kept the water at bay.
The moment I went into a room and was alone with myself and my thoughts, the water swallowed me. It took me like a dark thief and I went willingly because I knew I could pull myself out with my razor.
I crumpled onto the bed and let my arm hang off the edge, lifeless. Cease thought he took all the razors and tweezers and even kitchen knives but I always kept one. It was shameful and wrong but I needed it.
Being alone inside of my head was scary. My mind was wrought with contradictions and self-loathing. It was littered with whispers of suicide and pain.
Tears rolled down the sides of my face and collected in my ears. Even though I toyed with the idea of giving myself a permanent way out of life, I never cut to kill myself. Cutting horizontally was for harming but cutting vertically was for death.
Each scar pressed into my flesh by sharp pain was only horizontal.
I sniffled and sat up, my heart pounding. My eyes fell to the angry red cut on my arm. I liked how soothed I felt when I sliced myself.
I fumbled with my razor for a few beats before opening another cut on my other arm. That one was shorter and much more precise. I found myself wishing it would bleed more.
Sick me liked watching the blood drip and run out of my body. I liked how perfectly red it was because even if I was too broken to be perfect at least something inside of me was. I had perfect red blood that rolled over and coated the pain.
I flexed my fingers, pumping blood into my veins but still, no blood rolled. I only managed to get a smear of crimson at the cut. In the shower, the blood rolled so beautifully thick and fast that it tinted the water at the bottom of the tub. Now, nothing.
I let out a frustrated growl and cut my arm in a different spot, that time I pressed harder. “Fuck,” I cursed at the deep pain burning through my arm. It bled that time though.
It was perfectly red.
Once the cut was made, my heart started to beat again. It thumped at double the speed to make up for lost time, it seemed. I pushed and pulled air from my lungs so fast it all seemed like one breath. Sweat rolled down my neck as I watched the blood soak into my towel.
The pain was weird though. It was different and it made my fingertips tingle. Not with pain but with numbness. It felt like my hand had fallen asleep.
I wet my lips with my tongue and hopped off the bed, looking for something to stop the bleeding. The tingling continued in my fingers and I when I tried to ball up my fist, it wouldn’t work. My hand wouldn’t move.
What the fuck?
I tried dozens of times to make a fist and the most I was able to do was curl my fingers in slow motion. My pulse raced and warm scarlet trickled a little faster with each thump as I grabbed a cotton bandana from a nearby duffle bag with Cease’s things inside.
I tried not to collapse on the floor as I moved back to the bed on wobbling legs. Blood droplets scattered on the floor and on my thighs as I fumbled to tie the bandana against my fresh cut.
A dull thrum knocked through my chest as I watched to see if the blood would stop rolling. After ten minutes, it slowed to nothing even after I removed the bandana. I blinked over and over, my lashes moving like butterfly wings.
What had I done to myself?
Stupid.
So fucking stupid, Brooklyn.
An involuntary cry left my throat and I muffled the sound with my hand. I would have to put a bandage on that cut. It was deep. Too deep. I fucked up something important in my arm because I still couldn’t make a fist.
I went to sleep terrified of what I’d done to myself but not terrified enough to let Cease know.
