"Please don't cause trouble Mallory." Her mother pleads, sick of her attention-seeking antics causing her trouble. It's funny, it's funny how her mother never thought about bearing such a troublesome child. What she envisioned was a friend she could watch blossom into a young, kind and beautiful lady. Well, how reality has deceived her.
"Whatever." She spits before walking out the front door. She's not yet, too fussed about trends and romantic relationships, but friendships have been her main concern. The more friends the more regard she gets, hence that emptiness rids temporarily.
---
"Hey everyone!" Mallory joyfully said, bringing her friends into a hug. They all excite over Mallory's new pierced ears. Mallory persuaded her mum to let her get them pierced when Stacey Donovan got hers. How Mallory wished the kids drooled over her new earrings, not Stacey's.
Mallory stared up from her three friends and tried to see if any other kids were in admiration, none were. Her heart sunk to the bottom of her hollow chest, it ached hardly. For some reason the three girls whom she calls 'friends' were merely there to prevent that all to familiar sadness of being empty. She couldn't care if they all got ran over by a truck and died an excruciating death, in fact, that would make her feel something, something other than nothing.
---
Mallory sat in her room, chair against the door so her invasive parents wouldn't spy on her. The pain was too much, like there was a vacuum in her chest, it had sucked all her emotions and now was threatening her muscles and bones causing them to reek with gripe. She clutched her stomach and racked her brain for ideas to one up Stacy Donovan.
After searching the web she found the perfect way. No other 12 year old would dare do this, heck it's illegal for such a young person to.
Mallory couldn't possibly ask her parents nor tell them. This had to be a D.I.Y. job. She picked out the sharpest sewing needle she had and exited the room to find the superlative and most extravagant jewel.
She creeped into her mother's bedroom locating the ruby box she knew held all her mother's antiquities. It opened with a little creak and before Mallory was an abundance of rich stones and diamonds ready for the taking. She used her fingers to rummage through the fine materials until she found the one that would make Stacey weep with envy. Mallory clutched it in her hands and ran back to her room. She barred the entrance and sat down. She rolled her self forward, hunching over so she could see her belly-button amongst the rolls of fat. That's something else Mallory needed to change, Stacey was skinny, maybe that's why she also go attention.
Mallory held the needle between her thumb and pointer finger, the thread hanging and massive emerald attached. Mallory pushed through the thick layer of skin until a bulb of blood flooded at the surface, then dripped down her belly. Mallory winced a bit, but she thought of all the consideration the kids would give her and that motivated her. Mallory pushed upwards until the pointy needle surfaced back up. She pulled and pulled, feeling the string scrape and haul alongside the insides of her skin. Oh how it burned and stung, every morsel of the thread brushed it's way past her fresh wound and came out the other side. Mallory tightened her eyes and tugged more until it stopped. She looked down, vision bleary from her tears, and saw the great jade stone hanging off her skin.
"Perfect." She whispered. In her mind it looked just like the belly-button piercings on the Internet. Who needs a professional when you can do it yourself? But Mallory's perception is twisted; she can't see how awful and botched it is.
Mallory punctured her skin again and kept the needle moving in a circular motion until all the thread had been intwined between her outside skin and the raw incision. Mallory flopped onto the floor and let out a breath of tire. As she exhaled a sharp pain erupted under her skin where the jewel hung.
"Don't worry, it'll be worth it." She reassured herself, thinking again, of all the commemoration and most of all, the way she can see Stacey squirm in the shadows of isolation and loniless, just like Mallory had.
Mallory tucked herself in bed after cleaning the excessive blood that sat in puddles on the floor, thank gosh it was wooden.
---
Mallory wore a black shirt today. She awoke to dried crimson in the crooks of her legs and on the white sheets. Mallory's heart leaped into her throat, she thought it was her first period, for some reason she's been hearing about every girl getting theirs.
At school her usual three friends came up and hugged her. Mallory roughly pushed them off and screamed.
"Get off!" She winced as the laceration gave off bouts of pain. They all retreated cowardly. Mallory shifted her demeanour when she saw Stacey enter the school grounds.
"Guys! Look what I got yesterday!" She exclaimed consciously, eyeing Stacey. When Stacey and her friends' head turned, Mallory quickly looked down and lifted her shirt up and she witnessed with hunger as their jaws dropped. Mallory could feel herself beaming with this new found attention, it's the most she has ever gotten. The admiration poured into the void in her chest.
But what she didn't realise is that these children were seeing a blood bath. Yes, the emerald was a beauty and it was hanging from her belly-button, however, the excessive amount of green thread she used was tight around her skin and the blood had dried and become crusty and brown.
Nevertheless, Mallory felt loved and adored and that is what matters, at least in her distorted mind it was.
YOU ARE READING
Look At Me
Short Storya twisted tale about a girl who feels emptiness and her efforts to alleviate this desolation through extreme measures. how far will she be able to live until her numbness consumes her?
