Are You In or Are You Out?

Untitled Part 1

Are You In or Out?

Mature, Self-harm, rape, torture, mind games and general horrific things.

Chapter 1

I remember my mother, walking in a field and smelling fresh air. My mother was pretty I think, she was there, in a corner of my mind telling me that everything was going to be ok, just keep it in. Her voice calm, soothing and full of hope, full of something else too. Fear, I think. "Keep it in." she wasn't actually there though. I could smell her hair, gentle soap and coconut. The best smell after she'd come home from work and you'd get that first hug, bury your face in her hair and smell love, safety, security and the knowledge that she would do anything for me. Her face is getting more and more hazy, the details fading. The colour of her eyes or the shape of her nose. But her hair stays with me, chestnut colour, soft; I can almost feel it run through my fingers as I lift my hand up and look at the bloodied digits. I am clinging to her with all I have left. It isn't much, but whatever I have to keep hold of, I can't let go yet. For her.

I could smell coconut, but it wasn't coming from my mother. Other things that I remember are getting harder to keep a hold of. My name for example, they have taken that from me, it is a simple name, one single syllable and it eludes me almost like chasing paper on the wind, just as my fingers touch it, it blows out of my reach again. "Keep it in." I want to say Anne or Amy, Emily...Em, May?. I had a brother too I think, but his face is gone now. He was the reason that I was holding on so much, so hard, fighting my own mind to stay in control. To..."Keep it in." To stay with him in that field. Hearing his light laughter, seeing him run ahead of me a little, watching my mother swing him into her arms. Her pressing her finger to her lips as tears slip down her face. "Keep it in" she tells me again. His hand slipped out of mine when they told me he was dead. When they laughed, when they showed me his bloodied clothes and said that he died screaming out for me. I don't know how old he was. I don't know how old I am. "Keep it in." It was hard that day. He was smaller than me, I think.

Where I am, no clue. I mean I know I'm am, a small square room with a toilet and sink in one corner. The walls are clean, a pale colour, like sand I think, I think is what sand looked like. The floor is concrete and cold on my skin.

I try not to think about my skin, my skin burns, it hurts in small bursts. Whatever they do comes in small bursts. The only warmth I can feel is the burning. "Keep it in." Little pricks of electric that make it hard to think. I look down at my stomach, dirty, sweaty and bruised. I touch a star shaped mark, it's sore and fresh, it burns and stings and makes me wince at the pain. When I move most of my body is in pain. "Keep it in." Keep what in, it's getting so hard to remember. There is a small lump on my right forearm, it hurts the most, it's hot to touch and the flesh around it looks like it is screaming, let alone what it feels like. It's not open, but it's spongy and I can see fluid moving underneath. Sometimes I touch it, it makes me scream, but it also takes me back to the field. Takes me back to the sunshine, the laughter of my brother and the shine in my mothers' chestnut brown hair as it sways lightly in the Spring breeze as she tells me it will all be ok if I just keep holding on. If I just keep it in.

Taste is something else I have lost. I don't taste anything. Water has no taste, when the sink flows with water I can drink, it only works twice a day. It's one of the three things I can measure time with. "Keep it in." Twice a day the taps runs, flows freely whether it's turned on or not. I don't know which is the morning time or which is the night, but I counted once, the seconds. A lot of seconds, I don't remember the figure anymore or maybe even the numbers, but I still know it's twice. "Keep it in." I drink as much as I can when it starts and then when I can't drink anymore I wash the water over my heated skin, over the broken, open or cracked skin on my body. Through my hair to keep it out of my face. Something tells me to try and keep my wounds clean. Or are they trophies? At one point I remember looking at bruises and smiling because they had been worth it. "Keep it in." What could have been worth being bruised for I don't know now. I smile a little and feel the skin on my lips break open.