Papercut (kellic)

Chapter 5: Deeper

I spent the rest of the day in a daze. I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened after lunch. After school I laid down on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. This had always been my favorite thinking position.

I knew the events of today weren't normal. Maybe Vic was crazy. Wasn't I crazy? Wasn't I crazier? All he wanted was someone to smoke with. All I wanted was to bleed myself dry. I think I win.

Peer pressure never seemed like this in school. Peer pressure was sad and scary. This was different. Maybe my peer pressure is amber eyes and cold hands. Maybe it isn't so bad.

I stayed there for a while. I had to go find my brain and retrieve it from whatever strange place it was hiding in. Sanity seemed to be slipping through my fingers like grains of sand lately. What is the point of staying alive? I would always be like this.

My eyes stayed focused on the wall in front of me. The light that illuminated it changed from mid-afternoon sun to purple-pink twilight to glowing moonlight. I stayed transfixed, observing the shadows that moved across when a car's headlights would catch the trees in my yard.

I desperately waited for sleep, but it wouldn't come. I slept so little it seemed like I should be very tired some nights. It could've been that, because I lived in a constant state of tired, my body could no longer tell the difference between mentally tired and physically tired.

Insanity was clear to me at this point. Insanity was watching early sunlight reach my still open eyes that morning. It felt like only moments ago I had laid down. Insanity is becoming so lost in thought that time ceases to move for you. Or I still did not know insanity. But somehow I knew I was insane.

~•~•~

Vic hadn't shown up to writing after lunch the day before yesterday, nor at lunch yesterday, so I still hadn't seen him. Not that I wanted to. I felt embarrassed about the previous day. I thought I might die if I had to see him again.

The moment we had in the sports center was strange, indescribable. Maybe not to an onlooker. Likely not to Vic. But certainly to me. That was the most meaningful human encounter I've had in a long time. That says something about me doesn't it.

I've hardly spoken to another person, including my parents, in months. I'm surprised I hadn't forgotten how to use my voice.

I spent all of my first two periods doodling and dreading seeing Vic. The walk to the sports center was filled with fear that he would be there. But when I pulled open the steel door, the room was empty and smelled of dust and dead leaves, not of smoke.

The loneliness of the building met the loneliness of myself as I slid down the wall. Lonely was normal for me. I never did like change. I liked normal. These were times when loneliness was comforting.

I wasn't alone in that building though. I was far from being alone. In fact, I had a tin full of things that wouldn't allow me to be alone burning a hole through my bag. If they were the only ones there for me, who was I to deny them what they want?

That was the last thought in my head before I tore into my backpack and slid the lid off the tin. That was a motion I had been repeating for years, but there was something different this time. There was something making it hard to slide the lid off.

When I finally forced it off I going the culprit innocently sitting on my pile of razors. A cigarette. I picked it up delicately with my thumb and pointer finger, as if it were toxic. When I examined it I discovered it wasn't a normal cigarette. In black Sharpie, the words 'Why not?' were sloppily printed.

Interesting. I knew about a million reasons why not, so I set it back in its place. Now wasn't the time to think about Vic.

It was the time to chose. My sharpest blade caught my eye when I looked into the tin. A deep cut is what I needed. I pulled the blade from the container. I ran my finger along the blade, leaving a shallow cut in my finger tip. It was sharp. It was somewhat of a ritual of mine to lightly cut the tip of my finger before cutting. I liked to know how sharp the blade was. I took off my faded red flannel and rolled up the sleeve of my t-shirt. A deep cut in my bicep sounded perfect right now.