Vent Writing // Paranoid Scenarios

Story One ,The Safetypin

A retelling of my most recent self harm experience.

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A young trans boy, around the age of 14, stood in his shower-tub, tears pricking and burning his eyes. He blinked the salty droplets away, feeling the lukewarm water rush over him. He had been staring at the small, silver safety-pin that sat on the window ledge before him. The ledge wasn't very big, only holding a few bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body soap, the like. But, for some reason, all he could look at what the damned safety pin. The one he had just used, somehow still free of the crimson liquid that flew through his veins.

A few moments prior, the boy had just returned from his bathroom, secretly holding the safety pin in his mouth in case his mother had spotted him, placing it in it's specialized hiding place on his bookshelf. His thighs burned, rubbing against the cloth of his boxers uncomfortably, but he could manage.

Now, he was staring at that same pin, which was staring right back at him. He picked it up, feeling as if he were in a dazed trance, infatuated with the pin. It was small and insignificant to the average person, just a normal piece of sewing supplies. But to him, in this very moment, it was everything. It was his escape, his freedom, if only for a moment. It was also his enemy, calling to him in the small hours of the night. He hated it with a burning passion, but he always turned back to it when he couldn't handle the world.

He rested his left hand on the ledge, his fingers curled underneath his palm, the pin clutched in his right grasp. He slashed across his hand quickly, right under his index knuckle. It didn't hurt, at first, until he felt the familiar sear of burning pain. But, he kept going despite it, again and again, only stopping shortly when the repetitive pain got to be too much, only to return to the action seconds later when the pain had subsided. He glanced at the quickly reddening skin every few strikes, knowing the meat was much too thin to bleed from just the scrapes. So, he instead turned to a meatier part of his forearm, right under his wrist bone.

The playlist he had turned on, the one that calmed him when his urges returned, continued to play, ignored and unbothered as he struck the place at least fifteen times. He didn't count, but he knew it was somewhere around that number.

He was so caught up in the motions and burning pain, he almost didn't hear the screams of his little brother. Almost.

They weren't pained screams, however. The boy was only about five years of age, ten years younger than his brother. He was also high on the ASD spectrum, mentally handicapped. He was currently having a meltdown for reasons the older boy didn't know, their mother screaming and threatening him every few seconds. That's was really broke the older boy, causing him to scrape harder and harder, knowing it would burn for hours, and not caring. He wanted to see blood. Only then would be stop. But he didn't, the attacked spot only growing red and irritated. However, there was no blood.

When the pain got too much for the boy, he moved on to a different part of his hand, the meaty part between his index and thumb. His grip tightened on the pin, his teeth gritting together to keep from making noises of pain. Memories began to flood his brain, of his mother and step-father screaming at eachother, the ladder mostly always drunk. The memory of that *vile* man breaking open his bedroom door when he was merely eight years old. Memories of his filthy, dirty cousin, forcing him to partake in "games" that he didn't want to, but he had followed her lead, because she was older than him. It was only by a year, but he had looked up at her at the time. Now, he hated that girl with a burning passion, his stomach dropping whenever he was in the mere vicinity of her.

The memories soon ceased, the boy feeling tears well up in his eyes. He looked down at the reddened areas, not necessarily able to see them, his glasses on the back of the toilet beside the shower. Feeling dejected and drained, the boy set the pin back down on the ledge, turning off the all hot water that had once burned him, now only warm and comforting, and stepped out of the shower, the pin again hidden safely in his teeth. He didn't intend on telling his mother about this.