Don't Burn Out (Currently Editing)

Two

Trigger Warning//: self harm, alcohol abuse

Uncapping the flask, I empty the rest of its contents down my throat. I welcome the familiar burn of the harsh brown liquid, for it has become my favorite coping mechanism.

I was just eight when I started to experiment with with forms of self harm. I started off with burning my arms on the stove. Whenever my parents would cook, I would "fall" against the stove or grill. They thought I was just accident prone. It got to the point where I was no longer allowed to be around while they were cooking, so I moved on.

Cutting came next. I was about thirteen. It was a few weeks after my sister's death. I was bathing, when I dropped my razor. A part of the blade popped off; I sliced my hand trying to pick it up. The pain felt so good. I remember spending hours curled up in the bathtub cutting my thighs and slicing my stomach.

Athena flinched in side my mind as I recalled the first time I ever cut.

I still cut sometimes... only when the alcohol is not enough.

"Tiffany! Tiffany dear." Edeline Capers wife of Satan, mother of demons.

I hated her with a much purer hatred than I could ever have for her children or husband. She was not like her family. Blackness did not taint her soul, but that did not mean she is pure of heart either. She could have stopped all of this. She has power wherever she saw it or not. She could have saved so many lives, but she chose to sit idle.

I sigh capping my flask as I start to creep out of my special hiding spot behind the black leather couch. Just as she enters, I jump over the couch; which agitated my leg that was still throbbing from the beating her son inflicted upon me, and pretended to clean the glass coffee table.

As I felt her presence enter the room, I looked up from the glass table to see her familiar dirty blonde curls and ghostly white face slacked with wrinkles and years of guilt lurking in her murky brown eyes.

"Yes Luna." I bow my head respectively.

"D-do you mind cleaning up Taylor's room..? Uh s-she's about to go to school and after today she'll be going to Paris .. Um you know for fashion week. I just wanted her room to be clean." The amount of pity she held in those dirty brown orbs and weak hush voice sickened me.

"Yes ma'am of course." I simply gave her a nod then grabbed my bag of cleaning supplies and breezed past her and up the stairs.

At the end of the of the long white corridor, I reached a Barbie pink set of double doors with the her name: Taylor, scrawled across in white paint. I'd rather rip a fingernail off then knock on that door.

Athena whined and I brought my hand to the door, tapped twice. Almost immediately the door was ripped open and Taylor appeared with skin so dark it should be considered blackface.

'Wonder what Jim Crow showing she's headed to today?' Athena commented.

"What the hell do you want, bitch?"

A storm of heavy flowery perfume hit me in the face and I sneezed. She glared down at me and jumped away as if I had some deadly disease.

"Uh you people are so fucking disgusting! I should have you punished for this!"

Athena flattened her ears against her skull at the word: punished.