Venta Black | Amanda Young

Test Me

    So I'd rather be tested by goddesses
Resting their heads upon pillows
Of all they have learned

Live or die, Make your choice.

    The words echoed in my ears like a bad headache, and I could barely keep my head up with the weight affixed upon it. The blood was rough and metallic, and the machine poked at my cheeks, further cutting the insides as I tried to scream and thrash about. What was going on? Why was I here, what had I done? What had I done to upset somebody so much they'd want to kill me, in this elaborate, beyond fucked up way? Stop this, please stop this. I just want to go home! Just let me go back to my apartment, away from all this so I can just go to sleep and forget about everything. I promise I'll be better, I promise. I know I've done horrible things, I know I've been a manipulator, I know I'm a junkie. I know I'm a bad person. My legs felt frozen, and my hands were writhing and shaking at the restraints holding me in place.
    My rage, all my fears and unbridled rage poured out of me like a fountain and I thrashed around in the chair, moving and fighting for my very life as I knew it. My head hurt, and my body was slowly regaining its strength as I moved, more and more until the tape around my hands released and I was free to leave. I needed to leave! Please! Let me out of here, please god, just let me out!
Tick. Tick.
Oh no.
When I stood up, a low ticking chimed from the machine. My time had begun, and I looked ahead in disbelief. 60 seconds, to find a key, to escape. All I wanted to do was scream bloody murder.
The clock was ticking, and I was standing up from the chair as dust particles settled down from a dingy green tinged light. The walls were bare and lined with rust, caked everywhere. My body's movements grew sluggish as I inched forward to the dead man on the floor. He was in the furthest corner, shadows enveloping him in mystery. My dead cellmate, he said. The puppet said- who though? I knew I was being too slow, it felt like the whole world was thrown into a slow motion even though the seconds were counting down. Tick, tick, ticking. I got down onto my knees, kneeling in front of the man. I caught a look at his face, dead, resting.
Donnie. Donnie Greco, my dealer, my- my boyfriend, was he? Was that what we were? My head was swimmy and all I could think about were the nights we spent together, where my body had said it loved him, but my head was only thinking about the needle he'd soon inject me with, the need and longing for the temporary reprieve from the harsh world I was thrown upon. My body loved him, but my heart did not, I came to realize. And yet I still would cling to his side and we'd say all the words that a couple would say to each other, however we both were thinking about something else. He was my dealer, and I was his needy, clingy client with a knack for knowing how to pull someone's heart strings. Was it the same with Cecil? When we drove to Jill's clinic looking for a fix and accidentally killed her child. Did I ever love them, or did I just love the heroin? Or was there something else? Some external pressure to find someone right for me even though my desires and wants and needs could never be met by somebody like them. Someone like myself. I used them. Plain and simple. Despite this, my eyes shimmered with tears, and I felt along the sides of the machine again.
To the side of him was a knife. A small scalpel, would it do it?
In the stomach, in his stomach, that's where the key was. With one shaky hand, and an unsteady balance, I lifted up his black shirt. What was painted on his stomach, was a taunting question mark. My breathing hitched, and I remembered the timer. The clock was ticking, Amanda, do it. Do it, he meant nothing to you. Do it, you want to live. I don't. Yes you do. Tick. You want to live another day, you want to make your life better and do something other than wallow and hide your pain with drugs? Tick. I don't want to. He's dead, it's not a crime to gut a dead man. Is it? Tick. No it's not. Can't be, you didn't kill him. Just do it already. Maybe. Do it. Tick. Your life depends on it. You want to live. You want to live. I want to live.
I want to live.
Tick, tick, tick.
And just as his eyes fluttered open, paralyzed, I wavered for a moment, just a long moment before I plunged the scalpel into his stomach in a spray of crimson blood and entrails. No time but now. Slicing, I dove. Cutting, I drove. The low squish of my cutting knife was a deafening sound. He didn't scream. I didn't know if he could. But I knew I was trying to, I was trying to scream but it only came out as struggling muffles. Again, I desperately kept my grip onto the knife and descended the blade downward. Goodbye, Donnie. Tears spilled down my cheek, and mixed with the blood on my mouth. I pulled back his skin from where I made my incision and like it wasn't happening, like it was all just a bad dream, I rummaged through the wet, slimy, yet warm intestines of his stomach, remembering the shape of the organ, I clawed at it with my chipping nails. I almost threw up, my stomach tightening and growing queasy as I saw a glimpse of hope in the form of a shining key, the timer mocking me. I could feel hysteria grabbing at me from all sides, I fumbled and tried my hardest to get my bloody, slipping hands to shove the key into the lock.
Come on, work, please work! Please work, get me out of here!
I want to live! Let me live!
With a final turn and a stinging cut to the corner of my mouth, I threw my unlocked and personalized death machine to the ground, my head feeling light, my hair tangled and matted. Looking down at my bloodied hands, looking at Donnie's body, his eyes blank and his jaw slack. I screamed. I killed him, I killed a man, I had just killed someone in favor of myself. He lay there, gutted and lifeless with blood spilling from the opening I had cut. I killed someone I supposedly loved. I was purely, and utterly horrified.
A scream roared from my aching throat, and I felt my knees buckle beneath me. I survived, I did it. This is it, I'll turn my life around. I promise, from now on I'll cherish this second chance someone has given to me. I'll never touch another needle again, I'll never chase that exhilarating feeling again. Never chase the exhausting aftermath of coming down from a high. Never chase after someone to cling to just to get what I want again. Who can I tell about this? The police? Not yet. I have to go home first. Not the police, not until I collect myself. What had just happened? Did this mysterious person save me, or would they have cared if I had died? Just left me to rot as the machine ripped open my jaw and ended my meaningless existence. Did I now have a purpose, or did I always have one? Was this my wake-up call? The one I had always needed? Then that's when I heard a low squeak from the corner, and I looked up from my sobs, wiping my eyes with bloodied hands. The squeak continued until a shadow erupted from behind the corner of a wall.
Crimson spiral patterned cheeks and a glossy, cracking white shell greeted me from atop a shiny red tricycle. Its eyes were burning scarlet, suit wrinkled and black, messy hair that same raven colour. The ventriloquist puppet from the video. My tears fell eternally, and only blurred my vision further when it unhinged its lipstick lined jaw and began to speak.

"Congratulations, you are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you-- Not anymore."

The words did not settle me, but rather made my breathing turn quick and heavy. In a panic, I ran past it, and out towards my only salvation, a lonely blue door. I pushed it open out into the back alley of a bustling street. The low murmur of the city calmed me down, but didn't settle my nerves completely. I slumped down the side of the brick wall and sobbed more, wiping the blood on my skirt. My sleeves were drenched, beyond saving. I felt the world begin to crash around me. I felt hexed, cursed, surrounded by broken bottles and discarded trash as I wept, throwing a bottle onto the ground and watching it shatter, cursing. The glass glistened and showed me a hollow reflection of myself. I picked up the sharp glass and looked at what it showed to me.
My mouth was bloodied and cut, red streaking down from my jaw to my neck down to my purple shirt, now streaked with crimson. It hurt, stung a bit, and My eyeliner and eyeshadow were smudged, and mascara was running down my cheeks from glossy eyes, hair tangled and messy and matted.
My throat grew hoarse and rough, and the sky was a muddy gray, clouds obscuring the sun partially. I noticed the side glances from people walking by, but I didn't care. I didn't care for what they had to say. All I needed was to go home, and have a long, warm shower to rid myself of the sin that coated my hands.

It felt as if my world was thrown into a shade of deep black.
Yet when I stood up, the clouds parted.

Midnight

The shower steam welcomed me as I stood in the burning hot water, feeling it drain slowly down my skin and give the water a red tint. I felt my hair stick to my back, flowing down the curves of it. It was almost therapeutic, standing alone in warm steam as I cleansed myself of the blood caked under my black nails. Yet when I closed my eyes and let out a small shriek, I saw Donnie once more. In my mind's eye. Gutted. Dead, at my hands. Bracing myself against the wall, I breathed. Inward and outward, trying to regain my composure and failing. The therapeutic moment was over. Why not think things through?
I had ended up at the hospital at some point, I don't know how I did. Maybe a good samaritan came and took me there, everything was fuzzy. Blurry. Didn't make any sense. The doctor examined the scars on my mouth and said they would soon heal, and only leave small marks. I was thankful, but then the police came to question me and take a statement. Not often do you see a woman covered in blood, especially on her unsteady hands and in her cut up mouth, walking down the street. I broke down again, and apparently I had been the victim of a killer on the rise titled 'jigsaw'. Was I a victim, or a test subject though? I didn't want to think about it. I told them about Donnie. They had said I killed him, as if I didn't know that already. I guess I wasn't going to go to jail though, but they said that I probably had to see them again. I dreaded that. I get this feeling like something was going to drastically change about my life as I knew it.
I scratched at my arm, at my prominent veins, and ran a bar of soap along it, scrubbing away at my worn out skin, letting out a sigh as my tears melted into the water. The cravings clawed at me, and I ignored them. I dragged my nails down my chest and watched them leave marks, and looked down at the fading scars on my thighs. I was brittle, and I could snap at any moment, like a crumbling skyscraper. However, I'll say goodbye to this old body. Hello, new Amanda. I look forward to getting to know you.

I can only hope that this brings good instead of bad.