Fallen Angel

Prologue

Five Years Ago

It was your sophomore year in high-school, and you were absolutely miserable. Not that anyone, excluding the honor-roll students, was too overly fond of school…But with you, it was different. You’d been made fun of for your entire life - starting in Kindergarten. Even at home, you didn’t get a break from the torment. Your father was gone almost all of the time, and was a drunkard when he did finally decide to come home. Your mother was bipolar - taking you shopping one day and being sweet to yelling at you and telling you that you’re worthless the next. It didn’t help that they saw you’re older sister, Madalyn, as the best of the best. They basically worshipped her, completely ignoring you in the process.

During the heat of many arguments, your parents never failed to mention that you were the ‘accident.’ They’d only wanted one child, which is why you figured they treated you the way they did. A few years back, their precious Maddi moved out and started college. That’s when it got worse. Without the prodigal daughter around, they’d grown all the more cold and harsh with her. Maddi wasn’t there to make them smile, to make them happy…So there wasn’t any sort of contentment in that house.

About 2 months after Maddi had moved out, you’d started to dabble in self-harm. It just started as scratching at your skin with the tip of a mechanical pencil. Tiny, maybe inch-long cuts on the tops of your hands. They were very shallow, nothing too overly serious yet.

But then, the next year, high-school had started. On the very first day, you were tormented. You’d been called every nasty, rude, cruel name under the sun, and to top it all of, some of the prettier, preppier blonde girls convinced the bigger of the football boys to put you in a trash can. 

The girls then proceeded to roll you down a flight of stairs.

Nobody had done anything to stop them, or even checked if you were okay. There were a few giggles, a few people sat in stunned silence…But nobody did anything. The sound of the laughter still rang in your ears.

You went home that day, and had taken a knife from the kitchen, and went up to your room. Sitting on the thick comforter atop your bed, you just held the knife in your hand for a while - staring at it contemplatively. The silver glinted menacingly in the florescent lighting of your bedroom…but it also seemed to almost be begging you to use it. Your body, already sore from the tumble down the stairs, was shaking with both fear, and the desire to use the blade.

After a few more minutes of silent contemplation, you lifted the blade and drew just the very tip across the unblemished skin of your forearms. You hadn’t pressed hard enough, so there wasn’t a mark - or even blood. You sighed, closing your eyes and trying to find the courage to do it. Staring at your arm, your mind shut off - the laughter of your schoolmates echoed throughout your entire head once more - along with the words your parents often times spoke.

"You’re worthless," mother had always said. "Why can’t you be more like your sister. Maddi wouldn’t have made that mistake."

"Stupid whore," her father would say, "You dress like a metal-headed Satan-worshipper," in regards to the black skinny jeans you preferred to wear along with a band-tee.

As a single, solitary tear fell from the corner of your eye, you pressed the blade harder to the pale flesh on the underside of your arm, and drew the blade slowly across it - watching the skin part from itself and blood slowly start to seep out. The actual act of cutting rather than digging intrigued you at that moment, and you lost yourself in it. 

You made another line, then another, and another, and another…You easily had 20 lines on your arm at this point. You dropped the knife onto the ground, staring at your arm for a moment before standing up and walking to your bathroom and wrapping your mutilated arm in toilet paper. You walked back out and made your way, almost too calmly, to the closet. Grabbing a hoodie, you pulled it over your head and sighed in relief as it covered your arm.