Final Comprehension

Monday - 8:47am

I wake up, panting, and look around in my room, not sure where I am. My eyes search around frantically, my hands shuffling around on the dresser next to my bed until I get hold of the thing I trained myself to find whenever I'm about to lose myself – a little brazen sparrow with huge wings on it's side and a tiny beak that allows it to be balanced on a finger without falling down. I sit up against the headrest and, with shaking hands, put the little figure on the tip of my index finger. While I wait to calm down after another too realistic dream, I stare at the sparrow that's dangling infront of me.

I made it myself. I still remember how Enzo, my psychiatrist, first told me about this method to keep my mind on track instead of going back to the horrors I have been through. I remember laughing at him when he told me that building something tiny like this little sparrow out of a massive block of metal would help me focusing on the here and now. I remember him standing behind me while watching my countless efforts to form a figure instead of just a bunch of little, sharp pieces of metal that could easily cut open my wrists. And I remember my pride when he put the sparrow on my index finger for the very first time after months of sweat, cursing and my fair share of telling him I would give up on this task.

After a couple of minutes, I notice that the shaking of my hands has finally stopped. I smile and carefully place the sparrow back on the top of my dresser.

Thank you for helping me back into reality once again, I think. And I mean it.

I push myself out of bed and walk over to the large mirror at the opposite wall of my room. At first I avoid looking into it, as I have done for the past year, but Enzo has told me that I won't get better unless I start being able to look myself into the eyes and make peace with the things I have done. I know he's right, but even after this long time, after hours and hours of discussing my feelings and problems with a man who's specialised on traumatized police officers, the scars on my heart and my mind still haven't begun to fade.

Not to mention the ones on my body.

First my hand brushes over the thin material of my night gown, feeling the initials that have been cut right across my flat stomach.

WB. Wyatt Baker.

The cuts have never healed the way they were supposed to, leaving nasty, deep edges that I even feel through the thickest material. I don't even need to see them; their outlines are burned into my memory forever.

I make myself stop tracing the numerous scars on my bare skin and grab a black blouse from the chair nearest to me. I look around and my eyes find a deep blue jeans that I succeed to put on without losing my balance. Last but not least, I slip into my favourite dark boots and then, once again, look at my reflection in the mirror. I decide to do something I haven't done since I was attacked by a man who had specialised in fooling everyone around him, me included: I pull my long black hair back into a ponytail and put some dark eye-shadow on. Then I take an eyeliner pencil, carefully draw a dark black line onto my upper eyelid and stare at myself.

I look fierce.

I lift my the first two fingers of my left hand to my forehead, where their tips slightly brush over the other scar that's been left there one year ago. I trace its lines all their way from the left side down my face over the bridge of my tiny nose, ending just below the line of my chin. If that SWAT team wouldn't have shown up the minute my perpetrator was about to raise his whip again and again, there's no doubt I wouldn't be able to look at myself the way I am now.

Not that I like the person that is staring back at me.

The person that took a man's life in pure rage, desperation and bloodlust.

My name is Cassie Evans, and today is the day I have to face the possible end of the life I know.