guilt • phan

Chapter 7

TW; mentions of self-harm and violence.

Dan

From that moment I watched the boy I had hurt oh-so-many times stand there, while I sprinted away from him, something in me had changed. I had beaten him to a pulp, tormented him with harmful words, talked him down. I did not even know why I did it, he did nothing wrong, I bullied him because of a stupid assumption I had made when I first saw him. He hadn't even actually confessed, I just assumed he was... gay. Yeah, of course I know that a person like me should not be making that kind of assumption because of a so-called "gaydar". To be honest, I didn't even actually think being gay was wrong, making me look like an even bigger monster. I bullied an innocent guy for literally nothing.

But I couldn't stop. My friends... They would abandon me, hurt me... I didn't want to think about all the horrible things they could to to me. Sure, they saw me as their alpha-male, but they were just as aggressive and violent as me, so if I were to leave them, they would team up against me and do the same to me as I made them do to Phil.

Leaving them was not an option.

But hurting him wasn't either.

I sat on my bed, staring at the blank wall that was in front of me. Thoughts seemed to write themselves out on that simple white wall, as if someone was scribbling them on with a marker. Worries, what-have-I-done's... Bad thoughts. I felt disgusting, this power over him, over everybody at school, was not what I wanted. My breathing sped up, my heart was racing. My room seemed to be spinning, as if I was sat on a merry-go-round with rabies. I tried desperately to get my breathing under control but to no avail, I began to see little black spots in my vision. Not soon after that, the world turned black completely, and I fell on the floor.

Phil

I turned around the corner, entering my street, when the rain finally stopped. A small patch of blue sky peeped through the clouds in the distance and the rays of sunshine shining through the hole made patterns like ladders up to heaven. If I died, I thought, would I get to go to heaven? Is there a heaven?

I wasn't raised to be religious, and I didn't believe in a God, but it'd be nice to finally have an enjoyable place to live instead of this hellhole of a town, with its hellish teenagers always finding a way to pick on me. I could do it, I thought. Just...disappear. It's not as if anyone would miss me. Heck, nobody actually knows I exist. I looked at the ground again, shook my head lightly, and sighed. Not today. At least, not right now.

I fumbled around with my keys and unlocked the front door to my house. "Hello," I yelled when I entered the hallway. No response. What was I expecting, my parents are usually not home and when they are, they ignore me or they are fighting. I took off my soaked hoodie and threw it on the radiator to dry, putting my wet shoes on it as well. I went straight up to my bedroom, where I threw myself on the bed, my face buried in a pile of pillows. I was about to drift of into a dreamless sleep when my phone, that I had put on my nightstand to charge, started vibrating. I rolled over to the other side of the bed and looked at the caller ID to see who was calling. 'Mom', it said. I picked up, only to be greeted my mom's high-pitched voice.

"Hello Philip darling, I don't have much time, I'm very busy at work and I can't call for long, but I'm not home for dinner tonight. There are some leftovers in the fridge for you to heat up. Look, I have to go, see you tomorrow!"

I didn't even bother to say anything back, because she would not listen to me and just continue talking anyways. By the time she had finished and I wanted to say goodbye too, she had already hung up.

I put my phone back on the nightstand and got out of bed, because I was still wet and kind of wanted to take a shower. I lived in a big house, so I had my own bathroom. I closed the bathroom door and locked it, even though I knew nobody was home. Slowly, I undressed, making sure not to hurt myself by touching any of the bruises. When all my clothes were sprawled out across the tiles of my bathroom floor, I turned around to see myself in the mirror. I gasped when I saw how bad it was this time, my pale skin covered in purple spots and my body littered with patches of raw flesh. Disgusting, I thought. Look at yourself, you look like a mess. No wonder they hate you, you're weak and pathetic. My eyes were stinging with the familiar feeling of tears pooling up behind them, and I bit down on my lip to keep them from falling to the ground.

I raised my left arm to see the white, pink and red lines covering my entire upper arm, shoulder to elbow. I looked down at my stomach, seeing the same streaks of color. My thighs, littered with the same patterns. You did this to yourself.

I bit my lip even harder, desperate to keep the tears back, but I tasted blood. A single tear escaped, and then I decided to let it all out. Tears were now steadily flowing from my eyes and I turned away from the mirror, not wanting to look at myself any longer.

I stood in the shower, my tears mixing with the clean water, for what felt like hours on end. I truly felt as if I was gone, vanished, disappeared from the earth's surface, all alone in my own bathroom, but when I came out of the bathroom, the digital clock told me I was only gone for thirty minutes.

So much for feeling like you've finally disappeared.

a/n hello, i am back once again! i have test week and i should be studying but why study when you can also write about the lives of two people you don't even know and cry. i should really get back to revising my physics now see ya!

EDIT WOW thanks for 1k reads oml :)