Anyone who is screamish or doesn't like gore, stop reading now!
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Chapter 4
I finally stepped in my front door about half an hour later and I knew there was something wrong with me. I didn’t feel very well and I was really tired. Cam wouldn’t be back until six and Fay was staying after school for art club so I’d have to walk and pick her up at five. It was now just after three. I had plenty of time so I decided to go and make myself some food.
I walked into Cam’s spotless kitchen and opened the fridge. Inside were lots of goodies like chocolate mousse and milkshake but I didn’t fancy any of that. I settled with a packet of uncooked chicken, a pot of readymade tikka sauce and a wrap. By now I was used to making my own food. I got out a chopping board and slid a very large, glistening knife from the knife block, which had been left on the worktop. I pierced the top of the chicken packet and took out a huge piece of breast meat. I then wrapped the rest in cling film and returned it to the fridge.
I picked up the knife in my right hand and held the raw chicken steady on the chopping board with my left hand. The plastic knife handle felt smooth in my hand as I started to slice the chicken into small cubes. All was good until I had to cut the last few cubes. As the chicken got smaller and smaller, I struggled to hold it still. Before I knew it I had cut the back of my left hand between my thumb and my wrist. Little did I know, this was my first life changing cut.
I watched the blood pour out of my hand. There was no doubt about it, this was a deep cut. I stood at the worktop in shock, watching the red river. The pain was almost too much as I felt tears start to stream down my face, smudging my makeup. The thing is, as I got used to how it felt, I actually started to like it. The pain made me feel free and watching the blood trickle into a puddle on the worktop was quite relaxing.
I washed my hands thoroughly, purely to get rid of the raw chicken germs and abandoned the chicken on the worktop. I pulled a clean carving knife from the knife block and sat in the middle of the kitchen floor. My brain was hypnotised by the pain of the cut on my hand. I sat staring at it for a couple of minutes, my mind completely at ease. The cut was starting to heal all too soon. It stopped bleeding and the free feeling disappeared. I had to make it happen again.
I turned my arm over so that my wrist was facing the ceiling, took a deep breath and adjusted my grip on the knife. The blade made another deep incision into my arm, just below my wrist. Blood squirted in the air and came pumping out like a heartbeat. Again tears started to fall down my cheeks but I couldn’t stop. I had to make more cuts. It was the best feeling I’d ever experienced. It relieved me from the pressure of school and the grief of my dad. I carried on plunging the knife’s blade in to my arm, deeper and deeper, more and more quickly. I wanted to sing, it made me that happy. I looked up and out of the corner of my eye, I caught site of the time. That’s when everything started to go wrong.
Shit! It was twenty to five. I had twenty minutes before I had to pick Fay up from art club. I knew I could get there in fifteen minutes but when I looked down at my arm, I took in the enormity of what I had just done and I panicked. I had to get the kitchen clean and fast. I got up and started furiously scrubbing at the blood on the worktop with a dish cloth. I rinsed it in the sink, got on my hands and knees, and started attacking the pools and splatters of blood on the floor. All the time I was struggling to breathe and my whole body was violently shaking. My arm throbbed even though it had now stopped bleeding. I ran my arm under the tap to get rid of the dried blood and then thoroughly rinsed out the dish cloth, throwing it into the laundry basket on my way out of the kitchen.
The nest thing I had to deal with was my clothes. I had covered my shorts and my legs in blood where I had been resting my arm and I was only wearing a t-shirt. I quickly changed into some jeans and threw on an old black jumper to cover up the evidence. My clock said ten to five. I would still be on time if I ran.
I shoved my feet into the same boots that I wore for school, rushed out of the door and started to sprint down my road, round the corner, and down white cross drove, towards the primary school. When I reached the playground, exhausted and out of breath, Fay was standing there with alone waiting for me.
