Scars

Trigger warning note: Depression, self-harm, dissociation

She could hear screaming. Lots of it. Sometimes one voice, sometimes many, but non-stop, never-ending, constant screaming. Like the background noise of a radio you couldn’t quite hear anymore but couldn’t entirely ignore either.

There were words and sentences strewn among the meaningless sounds, yet she could never understand them. Always out of reach. Never to be fully heard. But she knew their meaning, if she cared to listen. Tumbled, knotted, complicated strings of pain, all exclaimed in an ongoing wail.

It didn’t hurt.

The world had gone to shambles. Again. That story was as never-ending as the screaming. Although, every time it crumbled, the screaming got louder. But that was beside the point. She looked around her. To the blacks and greys. There were no colours left. Even white was too pure to show itself.

They dwelled in darkness now. The sun still shone, of course, but it was dimmed. She could barely remember the days where the sun had shone brightly. Those days were long past, a vague memory of a better time. With it came an even vaguer memory of warmth. The word ‘cosy’ came to mind. But warmth had left them a long time ago as well. The world had become a much colder place.

She sighed and stared at the body sprawled before her. Blood still had colour. Blood was still warm.

There was fighting as well. Of course there was. How could there not be? Sometimes they were gladiator fights, grand shows of strength and skill. Sometimes, they were scuffles in back-alleys, where you never knew if you would meet someone honourable, or a knife in your back.

They didn’t hurt either. Although they should. They really should.

You would expect a clear outcome when it came to those fights. A winner and a loser. Be it a single person or a team. But it never was quite like that. The battles left the contestants wounded and exhausted, capable of neither mourning their loss nor celebrating their victory. It lead to emergency aid and forced healing. Preparations for the next fight that was right around the corner. Fights for revenge. Or simply because a new contestant had shown up. A contestant to be tried. One to be pulled into the throng. Another one for the unseen butcher block.

And still the screaming didn’t stop. Those were others than the fighters. It was truly one big, jumbled mess.

She gazed at the body in front of her. Arms and legs. A torso. She counted the fingers. Five on each hand, perfectly normal. That didn’t seem right somehow. The situation shouldn’t be normal.

The dark, it was a good place to hide, to lurk. Things one could not imagine rested there. Shadows hid among shadows into a blackness so pure it eluded all perception. It could be felt though. It was a sense of dread, that shiver down your spine, the cold sweat in your neck. It could never be seen. Seeing it promised madness. Sometimes she wondered if that wouldn’t be preferable to the life she was living. But what lay beyond the veil that protected sanity? Colours that didn’t exist, or simply more darkness?

Five fingers on each hand. A creamy thigh laid bare by summer shorts. Arms that had somehow managed to tan. Except for the inside of them. There, they were still a lesser shade.

A body. Such an interesting thing. A thing of living. It would always try to keep itself alive. Desperately so. Even when it wasn’t the best solution. She watched as a breath expanded lungs. There was so much the body did that the conscious mind would never know. Hormones. Nutrient exchanges. Oxygen transport. It all just happened. Not a single conscious thought necessary.

She looked at the small but sharp knife in her hand. A voice in her head told her that the body was sacred. It wasn’t to be harmed. It shouldn’t be carved and stabbed. To do that would be a travesty, a violation.

But it was so tempting. To watch the knife kiss the skin. To see the blood well up. The pain it would cause. Would another voice join the screaming ones? Or would it make the screaming stop? Would the fighters stop fighting? Or would the smell of blood cause a frenzy? Would there be warmth? Would there be colour?

She struggled. She studied the body in front of her. The odd normalcy of it. Nothing was normal. So why was the body? While everything was wrong, shouldn’t the body be distorted as well?

It was sacred in its existence. By merely being, it had become more than the thing itself. A sack of bones and flesh to be worshipped for nothing. A prison of the mind, to be tended to with careful consideration. Why was it worth so much?

With an angry swipe, the knife came down. The sharp edge carved into flesh like it was butter, leaving behind an angry gash that filled red immediately. She gasped as pain radiated. Her dissociated mind slammed back into her body with the same force as the knife plunging into her thigh.

Another gasp. A keen, not quite a scream. Blood everywhere as it poured from the wounds. Pain binding mind and body back together better than any superglue. Tears springing to her eyes as pain of a different kind found its way out of her system along with the blood. A blockage broken and spilling over. Time becoming meaningless, only counted by the throbbing of her heart in her wounds.

She came back to herself while lying on the ground. She’d been sitting there all along, staring at nothing, being nothing, knowing nothing but that nothing was real anymore. The sun was still dull. The world around her had regained a modicum of colour, but it was muted and hazy, the grey still overpowering. And it was cold. So very cold.

With a sigh, she pushed herself up and evaluated the damage. Blood had spilled onto the floor, leaving stark lines where it had trailed down her skin. The knife was still stuck in her thigh. Pulling it out would be dreadful, a pain she now no longer longed for but that was impossible to avoid. A consequence of her actions.

She stood and hobbled to her bathroom where she kept her extensive first aid supplies. The arm was tended to first. The knife then pulled out with gritted teeth. Pressure was put onto the wound until most of the bleeding stopped, then it was treated with more experience than she cared to admit to. It had become a habit, an art almost, to ignore the many scars littering her body.

She sat down on the bathtub’s edge. Both her mind and body were tired and she knew she would have to take a nap soon or risk falling into a stupor yet again. But first, she had to clean up the mess she had made in her living room. She would make sure that everything looked perfectly in order, that her smile would be back in place and that nobody but be any wiser. There wouldn’t be a thing to be noticed.

That was, until it happened again.