Pain.
That’s what I wanted her to feel. Such deep agnoizing pain that she would cry out and readily ask for death. That was the kind of pain that I wanted her to go through, pain like I felt every moment that I was alive. I hated her, so much that she was able to live her life in happiness, almost pure from her lack of pain.
Heartache.
That’s what she caused me. The way she laughed at each tear that came from my eyes.
DRIP.
DROP.
Down the tears fell, rain from a broken soul.
The way she looked at me as I huddled beneath the current of water from our shower as I scrubbed and scrubbed trying to make the pain and blood go away.
My name is Kiden.
She was my sister, someone I should have always been able to rely on, a person that was supposed to whipe away the tears that came from my eyes not cause them. I was supposed to depend on her, love her, she was supposed to be my protector and I hers. I was only ten years old when she let me fall into darkness.
Back before then she did try to stop the pain, she was my tourniquet to stop the blood flow from my heart. I know it wasn’t her fault that these things happened, I can’t blame her for something she couldn’t control. It had been... his fault.
He was the Devil, something black and twisted wishing only to devour our pure flesh and warm-hearted souls, eat away until there was nothing left but sun-bleached bones and broken pieces of hearts. He pushed his way into our home, pushed his way into my body and mind. I was ten years old, a child.
A child.
Hot.
So hot it was smothering me beneath my blanket. The T.V. was on and loud. I kicked my blanket off with my feet and spread my legs stretching. The Devil was sitting on the floor, I could see the glow of his eyes reflections of the Hell he would throw me face first into.
Cold.
I felt the chills spread up my arms, down my legs.
His hand was on my leg, than sliding up my nightshirt, and then inside me...
It hurt. I cried. He slapped me silent.
I turned my face away and I saw her there, standing in the shadows. Her dark eyes showed no emotion. I wanted to cry out to her to stop this, to protect me but no words formed in my mouth. It was as if every letter, every phrase that I had ever known had vanished from my mouth.
He pushed himself on top of me; flashes from the T.V. screen blinded me and I felt my head swimming. I couldn’t see, the strength in my body seemed to be leaving with each pulse of light. I felt his hands all over me, running up and down my skin until I felt us becomming one.
I wanted to scream.
I didn’t want to become a demon.
I heard the crackle of his jeans as they slid down his legs. He forced my legs apart. I could feel my heart slamming inside my chest, tears were running down my face. But still yet... no words formed in my head.
I looked at her.
She looked at me.
Why?
Why aren’t you doing anything?
Scream.
Scream.
Why do you stand there?
I don’t want to become this...
this...
demon...
She answered with her eyes.
Because you get what you deserve.
and
I KNEW
I KNEW
it was true.
I let myself go limp until I was nothing but a flimsey rag doll in his arms. His burning flesh ate at my skin piece by piece. I stared hard into the darkness. His lips found mine. I wanted it to stop.
Stop.
STOP!
Please, PLEASE, just stop...
stop...
God, just make it stop...
Than.
It happened.
There was a splash of pain red blood flooding into my eyes. I felt as if my body was being torn in two. He was inside my body, I could feel the pulse of him beating in tune with my own.
Beating. Beating.
I looked at her and then words formed into my head.
“I HATE you.”
So began my downward spriral into self-hatred only compariable to the hate that I fostered for my sister. I became angry and withdrawn. Mother of course didn’t notice and if she did she didn’t say anything. I felt tainted, something broken. I was no longer my mothers favorite, I was the tossed aside piece of trash.
My already low self-esteem plummeted and I began to cut myself.
Eleven came, I was trapped in my cycle of pain. I graduated from scissors and safety pins to double edged razor blades stolen from drugstores. Days blurred together only cut apart by the sting of rubbing alcohol and blood dripping from my arms.
The screaming inside my head became so much that I couldn’t listen so...
I cut.
I would rather feel the pain of the blade than listen to the pain of that tainted little child inside. I was broken.
I thought as long as I could cut myself to stop the pain I would be all right, that nothing could hurt me. She would watch me sometimes as I cut, a kind of satisfied smirk on her face. As if she was pleased that I was hurting. To see something behind the stoney mask I wore.
Mother began to fight with the Devil, she refused to let him sleep in the bedroom with her anymore. So he gained free reign over the house and my body. It became a nightmare each night as darkness fell. I would cower in the bathroom shaking the dampness of the tub pooling around my feet. I would hear her tell him where I was.
I could hear myself screaming inside, but nothing came from my lips.
He would throw back the shower curtain and grab me his snake eyes glistening hungrily. He would drag me down the hallway. I could grab at anything to try and get away but it never worked for long. Once I knocked over a lamp from the stand that I grabbed and it hit me in the head. He waited till after he was done to take me to the hospital for stitches.
Sometimes he would fuck me on the living room floor, rubbing my face into the carpet. Other times he would make me give him oral sex, shoving his penis into my mouth so hard I gagged. She would always watch smiling.
13...
14...
Blood became thicker as each passing year went by. I cut deeper leaving purple trails of scars and scabby wounds that took weeks to go away. I wore long sleeves even though everyone knew, it was like the stench of iron filled blood literally stained me. I saw the way people looked at me. They saw my arms and pretended nothing was there, they just looked away embarrassed.
She was miss popularity, head cheerleader. Everyone loved her. Everyone adored her; they didn’t know how cruel she actually was.
15 came, and so did my best friend Ana.
I staring into the mirror numb watching the blood sliding from a cut I had just made across my wrist. Tears were pouring down my face, and my hair was matted. My room was dark and shadows fell like scars across my face. I breathed sharply in. That’s when I saw it. I was FAT.
FAT.
MONSTROUS.
DISGUSTING.
I jumped to my feet and pinched at the flesh at my stomach. I let out a heart wrenching sob.
How could I have not seen this before? How did I become something so hideous? So overnight began my battle against this disgusting part of me. I sliced my stomach and across my thighs. I wanted to carve away every piece of disgusting fat that was on me. I wouldn’t fall to this disgusting part of me, I would rather starve.
First it was Anorexia.
Than came Bulimia.
She would see me picking at the food on my plate. She saw how I was becoming thin and svelte like the models she adored. She eyed me with something that was almost to hard to place, then I knew. She was jealous.
She made me eat.
I would cry, scared as each piece of food when pass my lips. She would just smile satisfied. If I refused she would tell him that I was throwing away perfectly good food, then it would be him making me eat. So what choice did I have, I ate and ate.
Soon she would leave me sobbing on the kitchen floor.
I learned that I too could save myself.
I rushed to the bathroom and shoved my finger down my throat. I gagged and vomited until nothing else would come out. I collapsed on the floor exhausted but relieved that I had saved myself. She would glare ice that sliced my heart each time she found me there in the bathroom.
The scale became my best friend and worst enemy.
If the number was below what I expected I had a good day, but if the number was above what I wanted I would cut myself angry that I was so horrid and fat.
115.
112.
109.
104.
100.
98.
The numbers on the scale kept dropping, but the hate I felt for myself never seemed to lift. Maybe just one more pound I would think, one more pound and I’ll be thin. I’ll be THIN, and I’ll be PERFECT, and finally I’ll be.... HAPPY.
She laughed at me.
You’ll never be good enough or thin enough. You’re pathetic. Why don’t you just kill yourself and do us all a favor.
Sometimes that would make me cry.
Sometimes that would make me want to die.
Other times I actually tried.
SLICE.
CUT.
SPLATTER....
splatter...
I would cut myself so deep that I would pass out from the pain. I would always wake up though, with dried blood all over my body. I would sigh and clean it up, knowing that once more I was a failure.
The Devil noticed that cuts and scars, he didn’t care as long as I was still fuckable. Sometimes he even walked in on me doing it.
“Why do you do that to yourself?” he asked me once as I passed him in the hall. “Why do you cut yourself?”
I stopped and stared at him.
I just wanted to say “Duh.”
I must have started laughing because he walked away from me looking at me as if I was crazy, and the echoes of that laughter sounded all through the house.
“She never talks anymore.”
“Very withdrawn.”
“Socially out-casted.”
“Her grades are slipping.”
“Maybe she needs some tutoring.”
“Parent-teacher conference needed.”
The notes that streamed from the high school always said that same thing, that I wasn’t listening in class or that I had become very unsociable. Mother always just threw them in the trash without even looking at them.
16. I dyed my hair black and got my nose pierced just for the hell of it. I cut almost daily. I smoked pot and drank with some kids at school. They weren’t really my friends, just some losers that were as far down as I was. I had sunk beneath everything that I thought possible, I knew if something didn’t change there would be but one choice.
Suicide. Just plain and simple, suicide.
It wasn’t like I didn’t think about it; really it was constantly on my mind. How if I did it I would finally be set free from the pain and anguish that I suffered from. If I killed myself I would finally get away. I wondered how I should do it. Should I use the good-ole cut the wrists technique? Or maybe I could throw myself from the roof-top of the school. That would be interesting.
My days bled into one as the weeks streamed by. They were only seen apart by the pain of his body inside me, or the release of the evil from within my body. I felt so out of control, and the only way I gained my control was by what pain I gave myself. She was busy enjoying her school time, head cheerleader with one of the hottie boys for her weekend date. I couldn’t believe that we were even related. I lost everything to her it seemed, when I looked in the mirror all I saw was us: polar opposites, different sides of the globe, each others mistaken reflections. She was beautiful, thin and happy. I was fat, worthless, and everyday I battled the urge to die.
Then I didn’t get my period. At first I thought it was maybe because I was pregnant. I frantically snuck into a gas station and slipped a test into my back-pack. I knew the cashier saw but she must have seen the panic written on my face.
I locked myself in the bathroom and sat down on the toilet trying to not puke from the horror coiling in my stomach like a snake ready to swallow me whole. I slipped it out and wet it. I sat it on the sink with trembling fingers. She kicked the door and told me to get out.
“No.” I shouted trembling.
Then she was standing in front of my grinning. I knew I locked the door, how?
“Did you get pregnant you stupid whore?” she taunted. “That would be wonderful for you, a ugly retarded baby.”
I stared hard down at my hands as I waited for the test to finish, I just had to ignore her. I counted the ribbons up and down my arms as she giggled.
One…
Two…
“You should have just killed yourself when you had the chance you know.” She laughed. “now if you do they’ll charge you with murder too.”
Fifty-seven…
“Are you going to tell your lover that you’ve finally become the concubine he’s always wanted?”
I pushed the bile back down my throat.
One hundred and five…
One hundred and six…
“You are just a worthless, stupid whore.”
STUPID.
That is all that you are, worthless.
I started to tremble from the rage and anger that I had held back so long in my life. Tears burst forth from my eyes like I had never cried in my life. She started laughing, almost hysterically.
I stood and before I knew what I was doing I swung.
My fist connected with her laughing face and I swung again. Over and over until I felt bones crack and spirits die.
Stop laughing!
Stop rejoicing in my pain!
Blood was spilling from my knuckles I was hitting her so hard, somehow my scars seemed to be reopening like the razor was whispering across once more.
You’re worthless!
You’re stupid!
You are the one who deserves to die!
DIE.
DIE.
DI.
D…
I stopped breathing deeply and the tears slowly cleared from my eyes. I found myself staring into a shattered mirror.
The doorbell rang and in a daze I answered it. A women in a suit was standing there with a cop by her side. Did that gas station cashier turn me in after all?
“Hello, you must be Kiden. My name is Colleen, and this is officer Brown. I’m here from social services. You’re step-father got turned in for some abuse charges, you’re grandmother wants to take you home with her.”
She was gone, the reflection of myself in the mirror.
The end
cold
anxious
contemplative
aggravated