Something for your Mind

chapter 1

Warning: self harm.

I stared at the blood steadily flowing down my left arm. just a few heavy drops, dark and warm. Both my hands were shaking. I inhaled sharply.

My mind was empty.

I breathed out, slower, relieved. my mind was empty. Blood was trickling further and further up my arm. I wiped it off with a finger, leaving a large ruby-couloured smear. I sat there, on the cold, tiled floor, and studied my arm. I regained my composure. Something about the blood, I'm not sure what, gave my mind some sort of pleasure. Some sense of calm...

I gave a short tired smile to the walls of my bathroom. My mind was finally empty.
I set down the broken glass.

I walked into the living room. I found my mom curled up in the corner of our torn brown leather couch. We were considered lucky to have a leather couch, but to look at it, it didn't seem so.

My mom was staring at her phone with mindless eyes. The usual. She looked up at me for hardly a second and looked back down at her phone.

"What's that on your wrist?" She asked, but her tone was careless. I looked down at my wrist, now carefully wrapped in a tensor bandage.

"Oh, I sprained it at the park," I lied. My mom seemed to shake her head slightly.

"I told you you shouldn't be going there, Mason. It's too dangerous." I nodded. I started to head to the kitchen, but stopped in my tracks.

"Uh, mom?" I asked hesitantly.

"Yes?" Her tone seemed to be getting frustrated, but I couldn't back down now. I took a deep breath.

"I've been feeling... odd? Like I haven't been able to feel happy at all. I've been reading some books and—''

''—What have I told you about reading these books?" My mom was looking up from her phone now, her eyes burning angrily into mine. "They are poisoning your brain."

I felt my chest tighten.

"I read about depression, and I thought maybe..." I trailed off. My mother nearly appeared to be fuming.

"Back in those days, society was weak. They blamed it on some brain illness, there isn't such a thing." She looked back down at her phone. I knew there was no use in pushing it.

Maybe, I thought, she was right. Maybe. I could be being overdramatic, or maybe the books were convincing me of something that's not.

I crossed the threshold from the living room to the kitchen. There once had been a door there, sturdy and painted a nearly blinding shade of white. This was back when I was only a baby, it'd since fallen and now permanently rested on the wall beside the empty frame for the last sixteen years.
The whole building was gradually falling apart, ceilings were leaking, the walls were peeling. But, it's not like anyone was going to do anything about it.

In our kitchen, Emelia was cradling Avelyn in her arms at the table. They were the second family in our two-bedroom apartment, an extremely common situation. Most homes held two, even three families, due to overpopulation.

Neither my mother nor Emelia had a job, we were living off my mother's inheritance from my father, who died last year, as well as child support from Avelyn's father. It was not a very comfortable financial life, but nobody had one anymore. It was rare to be educated or even to be employed. Most jobs were run by robots.

"How are you, Mason?" Emelia asked softly once she noticed my (rare) appearance. She was barely 21, but you could see her bones poking through her thin, pale skin. She was very malnourished, and it pained me to think of how hard it was for her to keep Avelyn healthy, when she could hardly keep herself alive

"I'm okay."

I didn't make eye contact. I took my book from the counter by the stove. I didn't want to join Emelia at the table, because that could result in some unwanted small talk. So I sat cross legged on the floor in front of the oven, the oven that couldn't turn on properly, nor even open properly...

I sat, opened my book, and entered a whole other world.

"...and lets cut deeper,
desperate to touch the depths of our shattered souls,
desperate to run our fingers along the jagged edges of the broken glass that we once called our heart.
let's cut deeper,
and perhaps we will graze the tips of our brittle bones,
perhaps the deep sensation of numbness in our chest will finally part
and if it won't, we will blame it on our damaged past,
how it crippled our minds to nothing,
made us think in words no one understands.
if we cut deeper
the rain will pour harder
but we'll have gone deaf
we will feel like a tree, strong and sturdy,
but oblivious to the fact that soon we will snap
and once more
we will collapse
and the hope that so nearly gripped at our broken pieces
will inevitably be ripped away
and we will be desperate again
desperate to touch
desperate to feel
let's cut deeper..."

     I quickly shut the book closed and set it on my lap. A single tear shed from my eye, and I let it fall.