I gaze at my skin and observe it's color. Those around me say I am beautifully pale, but I have never seen what they have. To be pale would be to have rich and ivory skin, but when I look at mine I see nothing but purple and red, intertwined with the green veins that poison my every thought. To me, I was sickly and cold - always just so cold. Hands clammy, thoughts poisoned, and cold metal gripped in my hands.
At the moment in which I died with the gun in my hand, I had seen what had been the first warm thing escape me in the longest time. Warm blood flowing beneath and between my fingers held firmly to my chest, and the ring of smoke rising from the bullet wound. A smile dimly lit my face, as my thoughts were clear for the very first time. Set free from a world of despair, I was now alive as I closed my eyes into an eternal slumber.
Images rushed by me in Technicolor. So vivid and severe in nature that they seemed to happen right before my eyes. An innocent girl taken over by guilt and regret, and the monster standing in front of her with a cold hard stare as he placed his hand on her one last time.
Just one last time.
Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes as she took the abuse as she always did. Lying motionless as a stone, this man had his way with her. A cold shiver brushed over her as if someone had just walked over her grave. She swallowed hard, as he finished what he had started and his motions came to a stop. He didn't run. He didn't swear. He didn't even raise his voice. He just sat up casually on the edge of the bed and slowly zipped up his jeans. To him, he had done nothing wrong as he walked away without so much as a word. Just that poisonous stare. A coy smile and eyes cold as metal.
She never really thought of herself as crazy. In fact, the word had never crossed her mind. What she did to cope with the pain was to drag a blade across her skin, although it never seemed to help. It seemed to be the only thing she had control over anymore, but this particular session was short lived as the surgical blade fell to the floor, and she sat staring blankly at the wall.
"Pathetic", she said. "That's all I can say", wiping her face with her sleeve and laying back down.
She had her theories. To cut oneself was a brief look at what life would be without her troubles. But within itself, being victimized by the blade was a problem as well. And so this was the last time, she proposed, that she would ever drag her blade across her skin, and benefit from the temporary bliss in which it brought forth - for that bliss just never seemed to last long. She wanted more, and the blade wasn't going to give that to her. She needed a permanent solution.
When it came to social activities, she would put on her mask so that nobody could see who she really was. A mask complete with lies for every question, and a smile for every for every moment. Beneath the deception was a girl who was once happy. A girl that was once a great writer and a wonderful artist, but had been tainted. The hot breath on her neck of her once best friend, now chronic rapist, killed her almost every single night.
He had always been a little bit distant, but she didn't seem to mind. She knew his secrets. He had been battered as a child by his alcoholic father, and his mother acted as though it were all in the child's imagination. After all, in his mothers eyes every child needed discipline, whether it was the sharp pain of a wooden spoon to the behind or a swelled and puffy eye brought on by his fathers fist of angry rage.
When he finally had enough of his father, he had found a hole-in-the-wall to rent out with the small amount of cash he owned, and befriending this innocent girl he had found the perfect way to get his revenge. Never again would he be victimized, for now he would have his control to choose his own victims. But never again would it be him.
She should of known, she often reminded herself. The way he looked her up and down without even the smallest glimpse of caring in his eyes, she should have saw it coming, she said. But she felt sympathetic for his past, and she knew that he needed a friend. Empathy and compassion had gotten the best of her.
The first time he had placed his hands on her, even he was scared. But what happened, happened, and it happened again and again over a series of years. Scared to come forward, she didn't know what to do, and so she took it every time. Without a word, and without a sound, she acted as though it didn't happen. But in her mind, it began to take it's toll as her walls began to crumple.
Her mother loved her, without a doubt. Her mother had her when she was young, but had treated her like she had been planned from the very beginning. Her mother never reminded her that she had shortened her plans or that she had never got to do the things she wanted to do. Her mother was her everything, but she could never see her face if she were to tell her what was happening to her. She could never put her through that agony, such as the pain she had went through.
She was determined to find a way through the fire, and to get the relief she deserved. But in a world in which she had to hide herself away from all who existed, and to lie to those she loved, she began to sink deeper and deeper into a darker place. A place in which eventually came to consume her.
Her mindset changed from what had once been. The glass was no longer half full, but half empty. In fact, she often questioned whether the water was there at all, or if it had all been made up. She fought with her mother when she questioned her actions, and pushed her as far away as she possibly could without being totally obvious that she was on a path to self destruction.
"It's just a phase," her mother would remind herself. "She'll get over it soon".
And over it, she did. With a gun in her hand, and a heart heavy with pain, she created her own solution. The writer in her uttered the last words down in her journal. The ending of her story that once began as a fairy tale but ended in tragedy.
"Upstairs, my mother shall find me. For now I have been set free from the cruel man who had belittled me and left me feeling there was nothing left. But who will save the person whom has found me, and who will set them free? One woman dead, and another life ruined. Which is worse?"