The White Hell

I'm here again, in this porcelain white hell. I really don't have anything against the bathroom, really, it's just it's the sight of so many mistakes and the failed recoveries from them. Does this always have to happen? Must every fight I endure complete its vicious coiling strike in my own hands, reaching for some implement of pain? The gods know I have enough of those, they haunt every corner of my bedroom and my mind, if the physical embodiments weren't enough to satisfy this twisted desire.

I raise the blade to my lips, my tongue flickering softly along the sharp edge, unharmed as I dance with the stained silver metal. It glistens like a pale mirror as I tilt it against my mouth, pushing lightly against the cracked red flesh. I don't know why my lips are this dark, but I don't wear lipstick because of it. It wouldn't look right if I did, if I covered myself in this. Maybe I should be a nudist, but for my scars. I push harder with the knife, wishing my lips would bleed, that they would split evenly under the pressure, but they don't. I wonder why of all people I have tough lips, even though they feel soft under the tip of my finger tracing the curving flesh.

I remove the blade from my face; it's making me slightly nervous. I don't know why I should be nervous at all if I intend to use the accursed tool upon my skin, drawing my designs of pain and agony. Agony is a good word, I like it since it describe so much unbearable pain that it seems to echo from the unmentionables of Lovecraft's writings. I think that Lovecraft was just too afraid, or maybe not imaginative enough to really describe his monsters, or perhaps he, like Hitchcock, realised and appreciated the power of the human imagination regarding horror as being far more terrifying than any possible description of the terror. I wish I read more Lovecraft, he soothes me. I should account to him several times when I didn't get this far, but I didn't wish to read today. Reading his works, while not reinforcing her words, would only encourage my awful depression.

I'm being fatalistic, standing here nude with the knife in my hand against my white tile backdrop while I delay the inevitable resolution to this farce. I stare at the glittering edge, that I sharpened only minutes before in preparation for this very act. I deserve it; after all, I might as well make a lasting effect to remind me of this failing. I know that this isn't the correct response, but then again I'm not sure what would be. A vow of absolute servitude to her, would that make her happy? I know this doesn't, but it makes me at least feel somewhat better. But I can't betray myself with such a lie, even to convince her that I don't want to fight. Should I fail in one aspect, or even not fail, but simply but concerned, usually working on another task when she finds me on one of her "bad days" then I am cursed to hear her rant, or scream and yell at me, or even worse, just hear a simple, mostly calm statement of her hatred for my pathetic form...it is then that I suffer myself to do this, to relieve myself of the guilt and pain associated with her criticisms.

I should be used to her, after living with her for 15 years, but my mind cannot accept that perhaps she doesn't mean what she says, but she still says it, and that is what affects me. She could simply maintain silence, and express her displeasure in another way, or even just avoid me until she had got out of her own bad mood, so to speak, but she takes it out on me. She needs the therapy more than I do. But she's in denial of a sort, and blames others in a typically American fashion for her problems. I suppose she is a hypocrite, but I am more of one. After all, I'm the one with a knife to my wrist and she's just screaming her hatred of me. She'll apologise later, I just know it. And she'll say it's my fault anyway, in that twisted manner of speech that confuses me so.

That doesn't excuse my behaviour, what I'm doing now, though. In my own way I suppose that I am just as messed up and dysfunctional as she is, only more so because I'm acting upon the agony I feel inside. I've lived like this my entire life so I guess it's a natural consequence of her fault, he doing, but I won't blame her. I can, actually, and intellectually I do blame her for the way I feel like scum right now, just like she said, but like a typical victim of abuse, I end up blaming myself and accepting the blame and pain and agony, that word again, as something I deserve. Which would lead to this twisted form of self-punishment in my mutilation.

I've almost got to the point where I've intellectualised and analysed and dissected my own emotions so much that it seems like their not there, only the desiccated carcasses of the initial pain and worthlessness that starts the action. I stare at the blade with increasing disgust, although it seems that I'm only directly my self-disgust onto the blade itself in this admittance of my perversity and failure. I wish I could see the emotion, would it be red, white or black? I can't see it being any other colour, since my mind consists only of those colours: black for the darkness, white for what little purity remains, and red, red for blood and importance.

It is a failure, after all. And I focus on that word as my body demands the sight of blood and the itching burn in my skin begs to be released, and the position I assume is that of the servant, servant to her, servant to my body. I begin to tremble as I kneel, my voice whining softly as I rake the harsh metal across my flushed skin, the light beating down in merciless revelation. I can't escape now, since my skin is already peeling with fragments of skin and wisps of cut hairs, softs and powdery residue of my destruction.

I wish I didn't live here, I wish I was someone else, I wish I hadn't been born. I wish a lot of things, but with her adopted cynicism I realise the futility of it all, and slash down. I force a smirk on my face as the blood wells up, and slice frantically as if I'll lose my nerve. I almost have, but I don't even want to be doing this. The marks are on my skin and my endorphins are crying, wailing with their sickening pleasure, so that I'll make this last, that I'll make it worthwhile.

I let my emotional pain slice down in my mind, driving the blade faster and deeper in my arms, on my legs, dancing across my chest with a sad rhythm that mimics the slow fresh drops of blood oozing out and sliding to the floor. I know I'm crying as I smear the blood down and then shred my shoulders, tracing out the old design I first imagined, then drew, and now scar there. I think I'll get it tattooed when I'm older. If I get older and don't drown in my current maelstrom of emotional triumph and anguish. I probably will live, such a cowardly act that it be.

I'm smiling now, laughing maniacally in my detached state, even as I'm thinking this and even as I reach behind and tear strips from my back, as if anticipating the angelic wings that are never there. I thought that martyrs became angels, that they had hidden wings, that I was special, but I guess I was wrong. Or maybe I'm not a martyr for anything but her demands, however not meant or lied about they are, but they were made and said and nothing could ever take that back. No apologies or excuses will make up but that she said whatever she said this time, since it doesn't really matter, and I'll forget later anyway, in my maddening self-infliction of suppressed memories.

My body seems to drown in the red sea of destruction that is taking me as black circles dance before my eyes, clouding up the bright spotlights of my white silent hole in the wall where I hide from her and despise myself for this foul weakness. Nothing will ever avenge this foolishness of mine, that she would laugh at if she didn't fear my doing it again. Maybe I'll cut too deep, she says, maybe I'll die. I don't think it matters anymore, but for the pain in her eyes, like everything else about her, that affects me so much she doesn't realise.

I kind of hope that when I live on my own, someone else, someone kind and gentle will assume this power over me. I don't think I can live without being controlled, I'm so used to her manipulations and her pain. The abused child goes on to an abusive partner, and has abused kids. Maybe the allusion to abuse is a bit extreme, it used to be far worse, she used to be much worse, but I think it might just be abuse. She knows what effect she can have, she knows how sensitive I am, and she mercilessly exploits my weaknesses without reprieve when I have displeased her. I admit I've learned to do that myself, but at least I am cold when angered, and logical, not emotional. I shouldn't talk, I'm so emotional now, fading into that white blankness that comes with good literature and hypnosis or meditation, and when I am at peace. Such a sick idea, peace in my blood-soaked violence. But unlike sleep, it's white and pure and calm behind my eyelids, not the scratching darkness of rest.

I would laugh if I could breathe. Such thoughts as I bleed my life onto the white tiles of the floor, onto the white marble counter. Snow white...I must be losing consciousness, my thoughts are so disjointed. I want to fall into eternal snow, to see snow soak in blood and melt until it's pink crusted with brown, like my newest scars will be, fresh white surrounded by the filth of the scab.

My muscles are begining to burn with lack of air, and I imagine their protests as white hot fire racing up my pale, cross-hatched skin to my fingertips. I wonder if her words are like this white fire to her, pouring off her lips with their deadly intent. Are their poisons too pure for her to keep them in? Or are they soft and black with disease, stinging and sorrowful as they attack? But they are here, within me so deep they might have been arrows, thrown in spite so hard they can never be recalled.

The old customs of Judaism were correct that a verbal agreement was binding as a covenant with their god, he who is and created all for his existence, that walking between spilt blood of a cleaven animal sacrifice bound them like the slits on my arm that bead with red promise against whitened flesh. The Jewish people were correct, so many centuries ago, that between spoken words and blood, nothing could ever undo, unmake, or take back the promise of her threats and spoken hatred.

And nothing will ever take this back. Not even my pleas, not even my records and test grades and her words of forgiveness or hatred, not even anything but this agony of blood and blood and blood and bleeding beading welling oozing drippings gushing blood erupting...

This page and all works copyrighted 2001 to Engel. Don't steal.