WFS✮ [🇬🇧]

1. In the dark:

"Ouch!"
I hissed into the silence, through gritted teeth hopping on one leg.
A shooting pain began to take place on my left little toe and spread.
I had managed to grab the leg of the wooden stool in front of me.
"Stupid stool," I thought to myself, snorting and gritting my teeth.
It was pitch dark, except for a candle placed on the floor, glued to a white ceramic saucer, which made a dim, almost useless light.
It was two o'clock in the morning and there was deathly silence.
Everyone had been sleeping blissfully in their beds for a couple of hours, while I was the only being still roaming inside that small villa.
I carefully picked up the candle and looked one last time at what I had prepared.
Everything was ready, now I just had to do it.
"Finally here we are."
I began to tell myself mentally.
"I just have to get up here...- I took a step forward and got on the stool- I just have to let a grip tighten my neck and I'll have completed the work...after that everything will surely be better".
I was trying to reassure myself because, to be honest, I was a bit anxious; an anxiety that slowly every time put me in the balance and ate me from inside, squeezing my heart between its jaws.
I stood a moment in silence, staring into the candle flame; a flame that seemed alive, glowing with joy and warmth, dancing to non-existent notes with its undefined red, orange and yellow shape swaying from left to right.
She looked like a ballet dancer accompanied by W. Mozart's symphony Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
She took initially slow steps and then proceeded faster and faster fueled by her conviction. And here are some à la seconde, some adagios and finally an arabesque.
The stick of wax slowly dripped downwards, falling on what was a simple white plate which, due to its shape, looked like a flower with a thousand petals.
It was a magnificent, if banal, sight.
I slowly looked up, returning to look at what I was about to do shortly thereafter: remove a burden from everyone.
I was shivering slightly, I felt a sudden cold envelop me and flow inside my veins, making my hands become two icicles.
My heart was pounding and despite the shivers that ran through my slender figure, I could almost feel myself sweating.
Leaning the candle on a shelf, I slowly began to form a tight knot with the rope that I had managed to get hold of a few days earlier and positioned this last essential element to the rest of the project...
"Do I really feel it?" I wondered...; in that moment it was just me and me, in the most complete and absolute darkness and silence of that night.
"Of course I feel like it, what nonsense! I've been trying to do all this for ages and now I don't even have the courage? How pathetic .." I closed my eyes and slowly began to cry, letting the tears flow down my face.
A thin face, covered in acne here and there: on the forehead, chin and nose.
Two small eyes, pitch dark and empty, emotionless for a long time now from all the disappointments, friendships, boys and girls...
An upturned nose, cute for its shape, but covered with a layer of a myriad of black dots.
Two very thin lips and always slightly bent downwards or in a serious expression, which seemed to be frowning.
A set of imperfections that made me simply ugly.
A monster.
I didn't like anything about myself, except my hair that was pitch black but too long, so much so that it was the object of derision and the cause of pain.
I jumped off the stool and slowly began to put the rope and the rest of the materials inside a cardboard box, one of those for shoes, only bigger.
I made slow, neutral movements that didn't reveal anything except me and the action I was doing: tidying up.
"I failed" I said to myself.
"I failed miserably, again"
I cracked a smile, not of happiness, but of utter anguish.
Finished tidying up, after placing the box under the bed, I placed the stool of smooth maple wood in a corner of the room.
That was the stool I always used as a child to sit at a fifty-centimetre-high table and draw.
Dad had gotten it for me and the day I received it, at first, I didn't understand why such a strange gift.
I looked around and picked up the candle I had answered on the dresser.
My room was so empty: two beds joined together to create a double bed, next to it a bedside table with a broken white light bulb resting on it.
On the opposite side, a tall white chest of drawers divided into three sectors, placed along the right wall, next to the door.
In the first two chests of drawers it contained my drawing materials, a computer, a Moleskine, a sketch book, acrylic colors complete with synthetic fiber brushes, pastels and finally some clothes neatly separated by seasons.
In the third and final compartment, you could find sweatpants, ripped jeans, skinny or bell-bottom jeans, a stack of tank tops and under them bandages, and wrapped in a foil pouch, a box cutter.
Why the bandages and the box cutter?
I used to self-harm when I wasn't right with myself and felt distinctly inferior to everyone else.
Next to the corpse white dresser, my study station could be found: a desk with a led lamp, a printer and a beige office chair equipped with wheels.
All the walls of the room were covered with posters of my favorite singer: Leon Faun.
I just loved it.
He was my primary source of inspiration after Pinterest and always managed to take my mind off the problems of the world.
There were also pictures hanging here and there and some paintings.
I don't feel like talking about it.
They are all very old photos, when someone still accepted me for who I was... and who I am...
On the wall opposite the door, there was a very large French window, covered by very long, very white curtains, which barely touched the parquet floor. Behind it opened a semicircular terrace, with a parapet of small slender columns, which rested on a double step.
It overlooked a large beautiful garden.
There was a fountain, ponds full of colorful fish, little frogs and dragonflies, red and white flowers ran between the flowerbeds and separated the garden from the fields: desolate places that no one now took care of, except me.
I had grown apple trees on those plots of land a few years earlier, to form a sort of driveway, and blackberry bushes.
I didn't like gardening, but that was another way of not thinking about my problems and spending time with my father.
My room therefore had an octagonal plan and a semicircle that corresponded to the terrace.
I swayed to the bed and placed the candle on the bedside table, also of white-varnished maple.
I lay down on the bed and tucked myself in the covers.
Before starting to sleep, I stopped for a few seconds staring at the ceiling.
I don't remember why or what I was thinking about, I just knew that I was dying of sleep and that I probably wouldn't show up at school the next day.
Then I closed my eyes and rolled onto my side, letting myself drift off to sleep.