Diamond Heart

Chapter 2- Showers

CONTENT WARNING: This chapter contains mentions of abuse and r*pe, as well as a graphic attempted murder scene and descriptions of an eating disorder. No self-harm. 

I bolted upright, gasping. A calloused hand touched my cheek and I felt a tear touch my palm. I slept constantly to escape him, but he had found a way into my dreams as well. I checked the clock sitting on my bedside table, a childish turtle-shaped thing resting on top of what I called a table but was actually a tall stack of books I had read far too many times. It was 1:02 in the afternoon. I felt my pounding head for a fever but my feeling ill, as usual, was simply psychological. My throat and lips felt cracked with thirst- I wouldn't have gotten out of bed for another several hours otherwise. As it was, I flung myself out of bed and my feet thudded softly on the carpet. Lazily padding over to the bathroom adjacent to my room, I wearily eyed the spider in the top right corner of my open closet. Long story short- the doors of my closet were forcefully removed after a particularly nasty breakdown of mine. My eyes didn't leave the little nuisance until it was out of sight.

I sighed and shut the bathroom door behind me, leaning against it for a moment to feel the cool wood on the back of my head. The faucet dripped a slow but steady stream of water. I must have forgotten to turn it all the way off the night before. "Whatever," I thought. "That's one apple down."

You see, most people eat when they're hungry. And I suppose I do, too, but my system is a bit more complicated. I operate on a system I created five years ago, when I was twelve, called the "Apple System." I start each day off with ten "apples." Each "apple," represents a single item, or group of small items, of food. For instance, both a slice of pizza and a handful of popcorn count as one apple each. Instead of downright starving myself, I instead punish myself for every wrongdoing of the day by removing an "apple" for each one. And however many are left, that's how much I get to eat that day. If I run out by 5pm, then I don't get to eat dinner. I make up an excuse and then go to sleep in a desperate hope to escape the monsters that haunt me on the daily. Every medication I've been prescribed, every therapist, every yoga or art therapy session- none of it has been enough to stop the hauntings. I didn't have hallucinations, per se, but I saw them in the corner of my eye in the darkest parts of my room as I got high just to be able to sleep at night. Well, I didn't always get high. Sometimes I got drunk. Sometimes I fucked; but in a dazed, bored state, hoping to tire myself out enough so I didn't have to think until I woke up in the morning.

To call them hauntings may not be entirely accurate, seeing as they are not dead people. Just people that made me wish I was. But I don't know what else to call someone who is both with me and yet very far away. Someone whose voice I haven't heard in a year or more, but who whispers in my ear as I lay in the shadows of my bathtub, my bed, and my mind. Someone that is physically incapable of laying a hand on me, but whose fingers trace burning trails of desperate pain over the skin they used to touch. What do you call a person like that? Or people, for that matter. What do you call those events? I choose to call them hauntings. Maybe someone else would call them something different. But it's my head, and my emotions, so I call them hauntings.

A pale finger flicked the switch in the bathroom that turned on the fan. The low humming came to life overhead and I stepped out of my clothes after I turned that poor faucet off, finally. Even though there were no windows in my bathroom to provide natural light, I left the lights off. I didn't like to look at my reflection, or even just down at my body, in the light. In the dark, everything is hazy, a dark outline that made it easier to pretend I don't hate every fiber of my being. Everyone I've known closely has told me I'm attractive. And, conventionally, that may be true, I suppose. Especially considering American and most European beauty standards. Dirty blonde hair that grazed my shoulders, a size medium in most things, eyes that changed from blue to green to gray on a daily basis, freckles that made it seem like I once stood under clouds that rained small brown droplets, and they just stuck with me ever since. But conventional beauty never stopped me from hating myself. Conventional beauty never stopped the man who smashed my head against a metal bed frame. It never stopped the man who raped me. It never fixed the grades that fell because I couldn't make myself get out of bed in the morning. Conventional beauty had never done anything for me, and so I didn't give it any value. All I saw when I looked at myself was a dirty, used, wasteful, selfish creature housed in a white, anorexic shell of a body. So, the lights stayed off.

I slumped against the wall of the shower as I turned the water on. I turned the dial hotter, hotter, until the steam poured into my lungs and my skin turned a shade of red I couldn't see in the darkness. Sitting directly under the stream, cross-legged on the floor, I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm air as droplets cascaded over me. It must have been dozens of times I'd done exactly this, but that time in particular sent a wave of a memory crashing down over me. I froze, and forgot where I was as the past gripped me and dragged me back. Sharply, I landed in another shower, another house, another state.

A tall, slender man sat on the other side of the tub. His brown skin shone faintly in the dim lighting and the hair on his outstretched legs tickled the smooth skin on my calves. I reached over and ran a hand through his short, dense, curly black hair. His deep brown eyes closed in satisfaction, and I smiled softly. I felt my heart swell with love as his thin fingers closed over my hand, bringing my knuckles to his lips so he could kiss them one by one. Young love floated in the air around us, sheltering our sweet ignorance in its blanket of infatuation disguised as a future together. The memory shattered as quickly as it appeared, breaking off into bits and pieces, dissolving into something that instantly felt heavy with loss.

I sat on my bed, the same man from the shower sitting cross-legged a foot and a half in front of me. My fingers curled into the comforter as I heard his traitorous words snake into my ear and make their way straight into my heart. It was two years after the first memory, and he was taller, darker, his hair longer. Darker not in skin tone, but in his mind, his words, his heart. I tried to stop them, but as the tears fell I clenched my teeth and spoke the forbidden words, "Can I hit you?"

His head already hung in shame and regret, but as his watery eyes looked up into mine, he saw, and maybe felt, my rage. My fear. My terrible sadness. My regret. My trust, burned to ashes. And he nodded. Almost before he was done moving his head, my hand moved of its own accord and I heard the crack as my open palm hit his left cheek. Despite his agreeing, something in him snapped. Or rather, another thing in him snapped. He lunged forward, towards my dying fire, my disappearing will to live. His hands, once comforting and a sign of security, wrapped around my neck. He used his momentum to knock me backwards until my back was flat on the mattress and my head was resting on the edge of the ornate white metal of the bed frame. He lifted my head up by my neck and slammed it back down- once, twice. The sound was still ringing in my ears as his grip got tighter, tighter, until my lungs were burning and stars danced across my vision.

The tears had stopped flowing. I simply looked up into his eyes. I saw all of our life together in them. Our first day, when I spilled lasagna on my lap and he didn't even laugh, just helped me get it off. The first time we went to the pool together and he carried me across and everything felt like a movie. Our first night together. When we faced our friend's death and helped each other through our tremendous grief. All the times we got high, the concerts, the explorations through mountains and forests. Everything- the laughs, the fights, the tears, the abuse, the phone calls and nights in each other's arms- it all raced by in my head in seconds. A single tear fell down my cheek as I smiled wistfully and whispered, "It's ok."

I had accepted death. I didn't want life anymore, if he wasn't going to be in it. If the man I had given every part of my heart and soul to could develop into such a monster, then what good was the rest of the world to me? Nothing was worth living anymore. I closed my eyes and felt the last of my breath start to leave my chest just as he broke out of whatever trance he was in. He leapt off of me, staring at his hands like they were on fire, and ran into the next room, locking the door behind him. I gasped in air, my lungs greedily grabbing for it. Choked sobs forced their way out of me as I begged for him to come back. "Get back here!" I yelled, lurching off the bed and feeling my knees give way.

"Fucking do it! Finish it, you coward!" I collapsed entirely to the floor, curling up into the fetal position and shaking, whispering "Please," over and over.

I didn't hear a single word from behind the door, and I knew he wasn't going to finish killing me. Glass rained down from the ceiling and the shards sliced into my paper skin, leaving me a bloodied, fatally wounded animal shuddering against the carpet. Except it wasn't glass that fell around me; it was my world. My entire world as I had known it for the last two and a half years, crumbling. He had set fire to it, locked me inside, and ran as far from the flames as possible. The memory, more vivid than any painting, slowly faded away until I was once more surrounded by a hollow darkness and steam. I turned my face up into the stream of burning hot water and ignored the pain, hoping the water might wash him away for at least a moment. But all that went down the drain was my tears and a few loose strands of hair.