The Only One

Chapter 1

Chapter 1: TW implied self-harm

There he was again. He was starting to think this was all he could do well. At least he wasn't bleeding. He used to bleed while he sat there. He hadn't bled for almost two months. That was supposed to be a good thing.

That didn't change the fact that every single night Virgil Sanders lost hours of sleep staring blankly at the torn candy wrapper perched on top of the ever-spreading carpet of trash in his room. He wore headphones, but he never really heard the music. He heard the alarm clock ticking away his life, he heard the inflections of the news anchor his dad had fallen asleep to, he heard silence emanating from the dark corners of the house. Mostly, though, he heard the relentless rushing of thoughts coursing through his overworked mind.

Except usually when something goes through another thing, it comes and goes. When a thought came to Virgil, it rarely ever left. He wished more than anything that he could cry them out.

He hadn't cried in years. Not when he was picked on, rejected, ignored, or abused. Not when he got hurt. Not when he hurt himself. Not at that one moment in that one book when you were supposed to cry.

He felt his neck stiffening and stretched it to the right and left to loosen up. When he turned to his left he caught a metallic glint reflecting the weak light of the desk lamp he'd turned on.  He knew that glint well. It was cold and sharp and could draw you in until you entirely depended on it.

"You know you want to," it said, "it will make you feel. You know you want that. You know you deserve the hurt. You know it all. So why haven't you done what you need to do?"

He turned off his light, curled into the smallest area he could under his blanket and was woken up the next morning by an urgent knocking on his bedroom door -- his dad. He was running late for school.

That next night, he gave in.