Awake
I wipe the steam from the mirror with the palm of my hand; through the streaks and rivulets of water cascading down the glass I see my face. Gaunt and haggard, my eye sockets sunken and my cheek bones like jagged rocks cast shadows across my features.
It’s been eleven days since I last slept. The temptation was there, as it always is, the temptation to simply lay down my head and fall into the embrace of unconsciousness. However, the reality was that sleep would offer me no release, no peace, no hope. As forlorn and terrible as it was, wakefulness was my only recourse for keeping the demons at bay.
I wander aimlessly from the bathroom, running a hand over my face. I dig the sleep from the corner of my eyes.
I’m in the living-room crushing up another addy, rolled up twenty in hand. The transition from the bathroom to this point; a junkie hunched over his stash praying for relief, was lost to me. The blackouts grow worse and more frequent as the days draw on and the abuse grows in desperation and obscenity. You see, being awake had its own accompanying madness, shadow people, voices, paranoia all descended upon me like Vultures to carrion. Better than the alternative though, anything was better. To sleep was to be damned to hell, screaming, torn flesh and bloody eyes begging for a death that would never come fast enough.
I take the line. My last pill I look at the twenty, it would offer me a couple more pills. Maybe some glass if somebody was feeling generous. They wouldn’t be, generosity was an unnatural state of being for most. Regardless a few more days of salvation, before I once again fell from grace. The Morning Star.
My eyes snap awake on the precipice of darkness, a few more small faltering steps and I would have tumbled unwilling to the pit. The punishment for my transgression would be severe, it had to be. Fourteen days no pills to keep me awake, too paranoid to step outside to get more. Nothing but the screaming in my skull and the shadows all around morphing, mocking, sneering and snarling. I see a great dark Angel from the corner of my eye; its wings fill the room, its face blank and staring an unholy effigy to the psychosis brooding in the furthest reaches of my broken mind. I turn to see a wall, just a wall but I can feel it behind me watching and judging I know I’ll never really see it, it will always move. I suppose a little part of me knows it isn’t real, but telling yourself that something isn’t real is one thing, convincing yourself is something entirely different. So now, out of drugs and nearing the end of my time I turn to pain the agony of physical sufferance stark contrast to the mental torture of the past two weeks almost refreshing, almost invigorating. At the very least it would buy me more time, at the cost of my own flesh; weak and flawed, broken, battered and bruised though it was, it would appear that it was still acceptable currency. It was a price I paid willingly.
I dig the blade from its handle, using my nails to scrape away the crusted, rust coloured blood in which it was buried. It locks in place with a satisfying click, the blade still keen despite its regular use. It glides across my flesh, sliding down old scars and scabs like well-worn roads that have been travelled time and time again. Skin parts, flesh and muscle tear, sinew snaps; I gasp blinking tears from my eyes, the sensation is familiar but no less agonising, I dig a little deeper. Never too deep though, never deep enough the demons won’t let me. I’ve tried, oh how I’ve tried but they won’t let it end, they won’t let me end it. The pain is like electricity, travelling up my arms to the nape of neck. The blood that had been trickling was now flooding down my arms, crimson rivers from the ravines carved into my pale skin. I gauze and bandage them, too much blood loss and I become numb, I become numb I sleep. The pain must remain fresh, sharp and ever present, it will fade but it can be repeated. The blood has pooled at my feet, with splatter across the table-top. There is little point in cleaning up; there will be more, tonight, tomorrow as much as there needs to be, as much as I can.
My ritual of mutilation will be repeated, upper-arm, calf, thigh, stomach, chest. Flesh to rend, tease and pull apart. Flesh that was my only own, no one else’s.
Sleep will come. It’s a natural imperative, an unavoidable necessity of human existence. I will sleep or I will die, the demons won’t let me die. Even when I am awake and they slumber, they exert their will, their dominance. Soon I will sleep, I have been awake for nineteen days, my mind is faltering and my body torn to ribbons, the walls and floor my canvas and my own blood some sick and perverse imitation of paint. As twisted and macabre as it is, I only wish it would last a little longer.
I wake to the sound of screaming, always do. Not because its, loud, or horrifying. I mean it is, but rather because it’s the sound of life. Life at its pinnacle, life being tested, life failing that test, life ending. The screaming becomes guttural as blood fills the throat, floods the lungs a wheezy rasp as air is desperately drawn in through a gaping throat. I can feel cold, blood drenched hands slapping uselessly against arms that aren’t my own, as hands that don’t belong to me traverse a mangled body, to a crying begging face. Thumbs find eye-sockets and push, her eyes pop, hot sticky jelly squirts out followed by blood which runs into her gasping mouth as she tries to scream, unable to. The thumbs delve deeper pushing out the back of the sockets, where they work quickly to pulverise the brain extinguishing the spark of life and leaving a twitching corpse hazy and blurred in my vision.
Hands shiver with elation; I feel the delight pumping in veins. Blood and brains wiped off on shorts, so drenched in viscera that it barely makes a difference. More, they wanted more they had to feed their addiction to slaughter. Just like I had to feed mine, my vision blurs I am myself again for the briefest of moment I lurch forward an instinctive reaction to escape the horror. Vision clears, once again my body is not my body, head turns getting its bearings. Still in my flat, stepping over the girl on the floor walking slowly to the bedroom, muffled cries echo down the hall from the ajar door. I know this one, the demon that is I recognise the nonchalant walk the casual cruelty. I retreat to the furthest recesses of my mind I block it out; this one won’t die for a long time, a very, very long time. I was a coward I couldn’t face it, I had before again and again clawing at the inside of my mind, begging, praying, hoping, pleading for it to end. To just end it, snap the neck, crush the heart, it enjoyed my begging. It enjoyed theirs more, so this time I ran.
It dragged me out for the finale, I think it was another girl, hard to tell any identifiable features had been removed, what little skin remained hung it shreds, the rest was red, bleeding raw flesh. Blind it lay hunched on the floor writhing in unspeakable agony, an inhuman noise emanating from a black-hole of a mouth, a ring of teeth like tomb-stones revealed where the lips had been ripped. A step forward, a louder whimper, a hand extends to stroke a ruined cheek. Now the end would finally come, the hand curls in a fist and smashes into the mouth shattering teeth and splintering the jaw it keeps going down the throat, the hand grips something and pulls. Her innards torn from her hang from the hand dripping and leaking, they fall hitting the floor with a nauseating sound. I sleep.
This time I wake in my bed, a single brief moment of peace, a glorious moment without flaw. Before I remember, before I understand, before I am awake. I swallow hard and sit up, my room smells of bleach there is no mess, not a single drop of blood the living-room will be equally spotless as will all the other rooms in my flat. I get up and shower, I wipe the steam from the mirror as I dry myself and stare at my face, cheeks full and my eyes bright and clear I have slept for nearly three days.
In the kitchen I wipe the tally-board clear of chalk, and make a single score in the upper-left. I have been awake for one day.
