Scarred

Scarred
‘My mum and I were shopping all day yesterday. It was great fun.’
‘I went to a cinema with my mum and dad.’
‘My dad bought Mariokart for me. I wanted it for a long time. I am so happy now.’
Her friends’ words resounded endlessly inside Meg’s head; a tirade of traumatic reminders of what she was lacking and what she had always longed for. Her pale impotent hand reached for the handle of the door to her bleak unlit room. It swung open when all the weight of the ghost-like hand hit the handle. One, two, three steps… Thump. Meg collapsed onto her bed as if she was a marionette and her strings had been snipped. She forced her head under the pillow to escape from the tormenting words that followed her home from school. She shook her head fiercely, trying desperately to shut herself off from the world of agony that enveloped her mercilessly. Her sobbing echoed throughout the cluttered house, reverberating around the empty rooms but there was no one to hear her.
‘I don’t wanna think about it. I’ve had enough,’ she thought to herself. ‘Think of better things!’ She tried to remember what was like when she was laughing out loud with her friends earlier, at school; laughing until her stomach twisted when her friends were imitating the characters from ‘Little Britain’. ‘I seemed so happy then,’ she thought. ‘I wish I could be like that now… surrounded by my friends or if I could….’ A drop of warm, salty water came out of the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek as if to give her company. Another came down offering its company. Soon, Meg found herself with more company than she could handle and the tears kept coming. Meg started to wail under the pillow.
‘Somebody, help me. I feel so alone,’ she cried. ‘I am alone. I wanna be comforted. I wanna be in warm arms. I wanna hear somebody say, “everything’s going to be okay.”’ The image of her friend and her friend’s mother hugging each other invaded her thoughts. The image of another friend smiling innocently at her mother, and the image of another friend hugging her father to say ‘thank you’ for her gift, followed in rapid succession. Meg clinched her eyes together and raised her voice. The tears were running down, one after another, like fireworks exploding for the finale. She crawled onto the edge of her bed and reached out for her school bag.
‘Somebody, somebody help me,’ she whimpered as she rummaged through the bag for her mobile phone, wishing that somebody cared enough for her to have called or texted her. She pressed a button to turn on the screen. Nothing. Just the cold glow of the screen and the wallpaper on the screen of her and her friends smiling at the camera, stared back at her. ‘I wish I were back with my friends without thinking about anything.’ She scrolled down the list of contacts.
‘Nobody would listen to me… nobody would understand. How could they?’ she thought. ‘Maybe Amy. But, I don’t know what to say to her. She has always seen me smiling. Last time I tried to talk to her about what was bothering me, she avoided me for a couple of days.’ Meg knew that except for gossip, fashion, and boys, the friendships that she and her friends shared were as transparent as a thin sheet of ice.
‘I should call Daniel. He has told me to call whenever I feel down even though he has never picked up before,’ she reasoned to herself. ‘I should call him.’
‘Hi, thank you for calling. I can’t talk right now. Please leave a message and I will call you back.’ His voice mail picked up the call. Meg coughed to clear her throat and tried to sound chipper.
‘Um…hi Daniel. I just wondered how you were. That’s all. Please call me back when you get this message. I love you.’ She hung up the phone and breathed deeply in a vain attempt to fight off the overwhelming feeling of loneliness that was compounded by her pretending that nothing was wrong. Her tears didn’t lie. They came rushing down her face, each one reminding her of her perpetual solitude. She wiped the tears from her eyes with her hands and scrolled through the contacts on her mobile phone once again. ‘Mum.’ The wet fingers that had wiped her eyes pressed the button leaving a tiny salty pool on the keypad.
‘Hello, Meg?’ A concerned voice answered the phone.
‘Mum? Hey, how are you? I just wanted to say “hi”. Sorry I know you are at work now. I shouldn’t have called.’ Again, Meg faked a chirpy voice. An artificial smile crept across her face.
‘That’s alright. Anything wrong, honey? Did you have a fight with your dad?’
‘No no. We are doing okay. I just thought about you and I thought I would ring you.’ She swallowed hard to keep the sounds of sadness at bay. Tears began streaming down her face tracing the outsides of her cheekbones and meeting at her chin.
‘Sure? I am sorry I haven’t rung for a while. I got caught with my work these days. How is your dad?’
‘He is fine as usual. He goes to work at seven and comes home around ten recently.’
‘Are you eating well, honey?’
‘Yes, mum. I make sure to cook for myself and dad every night.’
‘Good, good. Look, honey. I gotta get back to work now. I may be able to see you this weekend. I’m not sure yet. I’ll call you later.’
‘Okay, mum. Miss you.’ Meg’s voice grew faint.
She pulled her mobile phone away from her ear reluctantly, in a futile hope of hearing her mother’s voice once more. The cold light of the screen reflected in her tears then blinked out. A tidal wave of immense loneliness washed over her and tears burst out from her red, swollen eyes. Her sobbing was the only thing that embraced her.
‘I don’t wanna feel like this. I don’t wanna be alone.’ She was gasping. Her hands and feet started to grow cold like those of a corpse. Her hands were petrified, half-clenched, and claw-shaped. She couldn’t move them anymore. She was gasping heavily, her hands and feet lost all the sense. Staring at the white wall on the side of her bed, she was swallowed by her rapid heartbeat, unable to catch a breath. ‘I need to stop hyperventilating. Stop! Stop!’ The thoughts screamed in her mind. Her gasping got heavier.
‘Ahhhh! Ahhhh!’ She screamed out loud, holding her head between her numb hands. ‘He...help,’ she faintly uttered. ‘Somebody, help me, please. I don’t wanna suffer like this anymore. Think something happy. Think, think.’ She thought of her mother smiling at her gently on her tenth birthday, and her breathing started to slow, but then thoughts of what happened a month after that birthday, the day her parents told her that they were going to separate, devoured any fragment of potential joy. The tears wouldn’t stop. She put her head down into the soft embrace of the damp pillow and closed her eyes, trying to calm down. Her breathing began to regulate. Without her realising it, a soothing calm overtook her.
The brief respite didn't last long. BWARP. Her phone vibrated against the white, painted wood that made up the frame of her bed. Without opening her eyes, she snatched her phone, like a hungry cat pouncing on a mouse. ‘Maybe it’s Daniel.’ She opened her eyes just enough to see the familiar, white glow of her phone’s screen. Her eyes scanned over the various pieces of information on the screen. There was one text message in her inbox, ‘who is it from;’ it was 6:48, ‘I must have fallen asleep;’ and there was the wallpaper of her and her friends, ‘yeah… some friends.’ Her fingers, now stiffly able to move, slid gently across the phone’s keypad and, with a subtle touch, her inbox opened. It was a message from her dad. ‘I’ll be home late, don't worry about my dinner.’ Her hand became limp. The phone slid from her flaccid hand and landed with a muffled thud on her mattress. The tears that had ceased during her unplanned slumber returned in a fury. ‘STOP!’
She reached out trying to retrieve her phone, moving her hand across the mattress, unable to see because of the cavalcade of tears emerging from deep within her. The back of her index finger brushed against something cold and metallic. The sudden touch of cool metal against her hot skin was like the bite of an insect, but she welcomed it. She slowly reached her index finger around the object and her other digits followed in turn until she could feel the cool object within her grip. She ran her thumb down its long smooth edge then curled it around the flat side where she knew she would find the ridged, rectangular, plastic switch.
She laid the meat of her thumb across the ridges and pressed. Click. The switch moved. With a little more force, the switch clicked again. She found it odd that such a simple sound could provide such comfort. The voices of her self-centered, superficial, so-called friends that had been haunting her grew more silent with each click. Click, click, click. Something emerged from the, now warm, metal device. It too was long and metallic but this new object had a sharp tip and a keen edge.
Meg noticed that her tears had stopped along with her tormenting thoughts. All that was in her mind now was the blade and all that was on her face was a slight grin. She lifted the grey retractable knife and pressed the backside of the blade against the back of her wrist, tracing the numerous thin scars of her past. She liked the feel of the metal dragging across her skin. It made everything else seem distant, but it wasn’t enough. She flipped the blade around, now the sharp edge of the knife made a tiny valley in her ghostly flesh. She adjusted the knife ever so slightly so that the entirety of its power was at its tip. As it penetrated her, she rapidly drew the blade across her wrist, creating a long straight gash. Blood began to fill the perfect incision.
Tears once again began to pour, spilling onto her bleeding arm; the tears mixing with the red blood set loose by her own hand, creating a thin mixture that dripped onto and disappeared into her black bed sheets. ‘Why,’ she thought to herself. ‘What’s wrong with me?’
She quickly clicked the blade back into the knife and tucked it into the gap between the mattress and the bed frame. It vanished in the shadows of the recess and to Meg, it was now as if the knife had never existed within the room except for the oozing wound on her arm.
She placed one foot onto the cool, shining hardwood floor and then the other, cradling her arm to prevent any blood from dripping onto her schoolbag or her slippers. She glided across her room to her glossy red chest of drawers and with the hand attached to her intact arm she slid open the top drawer. Amongst the clutter of stationary, old birthday and Christmas cards, and old notes passed in class she found a small box of plasters that she had put there after she had danced this dance the first time. She pulled two plasters out of the box then placed it back into the drawer, tucking it behind a haphazard stack of notepaper.
Closing the drawer, she shuffled back to her bed and sat on the edge. She unwrapped one of the plasters and removed the thin backing paper, letting the pieces fall to the floor. She pressed once side of the plaster on her arm making sure that it was stuck fast then tugged at it, closing the tiny canyon on her wrist, and stuck the remainder of the plaster in place. She then repeated the process with careful precision in tearful silence. The silence was broken by the familiar buzz of her cell phone. Someone was calling. She grabbed her phone and pressed the talk button. She swallowed hard and conjured up her chirpy voice, ‘Hello?’
‘Hey babe,’ it was Daniel. ‘You called me?’
‘Yeah, I just wanted to say hi.’
‘Okay. Hi. Look, I’ll see you tomorrow at school. I gotta go. Is everything good?’
‘Yeah, everything’s fine. Um… I just cut myself in the kitchen but I’m okay. I love you. Bye.’ She pressed the end button, and as if the button was connected to her eyes, tears began to spring out once again. She buried her face in her pillow’s soft contours and wept until her overwhelming fatigue overcame her.