My fingers fumbled over each other, twitching with the Itch I’ve grown so accustomed to. I looked from my incomplete homework to my palms, slowly caressing them with my black-painted nail. I pushed my thumb into it, the very middle of my hand. I felt the softness, the muscle lightly coated in fat protecting myself from the hard works of life. If only my soul could be coated with the same strong muscle and bit of fat to keep me safe. Sadly, that isn’t the truth, it could be the exact opposite.
I stopped staring at my twitching fingers as I was forced to the ground forcefully. My head slammed against the tile floor of my science classroom. I shuddered only a tiny bit because of the coolness beneath me. I didn’t have time to look and see the offender, because she rolled me around harshly. I consider this a highlight of my day, this helped me conserve my energy for something far better than going towards the will of the bully. I say thank you, that helps me use what I have of muscles to help my itch.
“Hey brat, why’d you steal my glue stick,” Madison chomped her gum, spitting it all over my face. Her brunette hair sagged and tickled my ears. Her dark red lipstick was smeared all over her face, it also looked like she had used it for eye shadow too, because it was the same dark shade that was up to her eyebrows. She has a straight bob cut, but it’s pretty short, showing how close she was to me. “Give it back to me or else you’ll need a haircut!”
Madison pulled out her stretchy blueberry gum from her mouth and slowly edged it closer and closer to my hair. I could smell that it had lost its taste and took on the scent of her un-brushed teeth. I held my ground (not really) and stared into her hazel eyes with a straight face. “I haven’t any glue in stick form, so could please get off of me and check for yourself?” I offered, in a very neutral tone.
She elbowed herself up, using my ribs as a support. I crunched my body up, ready to stand and which her destroy my pouch, but instead she stomped her foot onto my stomach. She dumped all of my supplies out and onto my legs, splattering me with pen marks and confetti colored markers. She rummaged through it all, yet she still thought that I had stolen her glue stick even though she couldn’t see it. I felt the lead of the pencils being jabbed into my knees and weak spots. The Itch grew and grew as Madison put more and more pressure on my abdomen.
“Done yet,” I humored myself, in my own special sarcasm. No one understood it but me, making it my own. Madison didn’t understand, so she picked up a ball pointed pen and shoved it into the soft spot of my knee. She was very strong, but apparently the pen didn’t work with her and only made a soon-to-be bruise. Nothing hurt though, it only felt familiar, and the Itch grew and grew.
A crowd started to gather around us, some people cheering her on, and others standing by, not knowing what to do. Madison looked into my eyes wildly and laughed viciously. “Where’s the teacher,” I heard a few people ask each other, but other than that there were no attempts made by anyone to come and help me. I sat, staring at Madison’s beady eyes, clouding up with hatred. She roared as she stabbed me with one of my mechanical pencils, this time didn’t make a bruise but a fresh cut, gushing out scarlet blood.
“Did you find your stick of glue,” I asked, trying to hold back the erg to make a noise from the pain in my left leg. It wasn’t as intense from what I was used to, but the deepness of the cut made it a different kind of rich pain that I didn’t like; this won’t heal easily.
“Children?” Everyone darted back to their seats as Mrs. Kissman came into the room. She was practically blind, so she wouldn’t be able to see anything anyways. She looked down at me on the floor, bent in a awkward position and bleeding. She took the bridge of her glasses so that she could wipe them off, trying to get a better look at me. All in all it was the same vision she had had before removing them. “Why are you on the tile young lady?”
I straightened up as much as I could and started to pull my things together, “Oh, I fell and all of my things spilled everywhere! I might need some help washing up though, my red marker ink spilled everywhere. I think that Madison should help me, she is my friend after all!” I didn’t really think about what I was doing until Madison came down to my level, glaring.
“Wonderful teamwork ladies,” Mrs. Kissman exclaimed, cheering us on with Madison’s dirty work. Just then the Itch became too much for me to handle. I needed to get out of there and run for the restroom. I hung onto Mrs. Kissman’s pant leg as she walked, letting her know that I wasn’t finished with her.
“Yes, what do you want?” She was a bit fed up with me now, making a scene in front of her had set her elderly mind on edge. I stood up slowly, actually as fast as I could, but it was harder than it looked. After all, the pen had been pretty far into my knee.
“Can I go to the bathroom to freshen up,” the whole classroom breathed a big sigh of relief, they must’ve thought that I was going to rat her out, but they had forgotten about all of the other times that Madison had been a bully to me and I just ignored it. I guess that’s why she kept coming back to me to hurt.
“Sure,” Mrs. Kissman yammered, “but, but make it quick, I have to teach a lesson you know!” She laughed and shooed me out the door with her bony hand, fluttering like a butterfly. Well, at least a disgusting butterfly with flabby-skin wings.
I raced out the door like a snail squirming to get a bit of a freshly cut carrot. Pretty slow then, but at least I tried.
I hopped and flung my body, weightless, onto the lockers. My whole body smashed into the locks, banging up and scratching my back, but I don’t care. I slid quicker than before down to the floor and whipped out my Swiss Army Knife from my front pocket. I flipped it open, letting the Itch take control of me. I turned my wrist to see the open flesh, and slowly sliced across the way. It felt like poison into my mouth, a horrible sensation, but I had to call it good. It released my feelings. No one was near me, so I could simply do this by myself without anyone watching as if I were in a carnival.
I cut across as much as I felt need for, which was nine marks in total. I was glad that I had a sweater in my locker to hide them, along with the scars made from previous cutting sessions. The other good thing about a sweater is that it scratches against the closed wound, opening it even more than you’d think possible.
I pulled out a packet of salt and a bag containing a sliced lemon. I quickly poured about seven bits of salt into each wound and squeezed some lemon juice into each one. This screaming pain was what I was used to, not a pen going deep into my skin. I looked into a mirror to see my expression.
I had finally satisfied my Itch.
