PRECIOUS
by Marcy (periacta@hotmail.com)

I stopped myself. Fear and reason flooded beck into my brain. Why was I doing this? I didn’t hold pain well, why would I choose to inflict it upon myself?
I had come into the kitchen for a glass of water. As I set down the glass, it caught my eye. It wasn’t the first time it had caught my attention, but I had managed to ignore it, to push it back into the murky depths of my mind. But it was past midnight, there were no distractions. I saw it, I had used it so many times, to slice through flesh—not mine, but flesh just the same, the muscle of a once living creature. What was the last sensation felt, as the knife pierced the skin? Curiosity overwhelmed me. I rested my hand on the handle, feeling the shape of the handle, pressing my palm against it.
What did I hope to release with the blood? I had so many sour thought trapped inside of me, inside my veins, would it seep out, dripping onto the floor, to be wiped up and forgotten? I squeezed the handle tighter, trying to feel a pulse in the wood.
I could hear my brother shifting on the floor above. He was awake, and aware of my absence. I didn’t have much time before he came to investigate. I picked up the knife exhilarated with the feeling of rush. Adrenaline pumped to my brain, working like a drug to alter my state of mind. My skin became a barrier, a cage instead of security. I wanted to take it off, tear it all of, I wanted to bleed until I ran dry, purge myself of all evil, all the wrong that had occurred in me.
I chose a spot. My upper arm, so Frank, at least, wouldn’t notice. My skin looked so pale, so anemic and bland, simply begging to be colored. Laying the blade flat against my arm, I glanced at my reflection in the silver. I despised my face, and at that moment I could see why only my brother loved me, why it took so much pain to be loved.
I lifted the blade onto its edge, pressing it hard. I felt the warmness, a heat which intensified, for a moment, into an agonizing burn. Pulling the knife away, I watched the red bloom out, swelling, and dripping, drop by drop, onto the tile. Here we go; I counted the drops as the fell. One………two………three………I grinned in satisfaction. With every drop, I hated myself less, hated Frank and Columbia less, loved my brother more. Seven………eight………it was such a beautiful deep red, pooling onto the floor; I soaked it up with a towel, and watched it stain the towel, spreading out like an unfurling flag. Nine………ten………eleven……… He would be angry when he noticed the scars traveling across my arms. There was no way to hide them, anything that could be covered in clothing would be revealed in his presence. I could only hope he would miss them, pass them over with his fingers, his lips. Twelve………thirteen………

I rinsed off the knife, threw away the towel, and, licking the last drops off my arm, climbed the stairs to bed.


The bleeding continued, day after day, late at night, I bled again. If he noticed, he mentioned nothing. I fell in love with the blood that flowed from me, bringing myself to cut deeper and deeper into myself, bringing up more. I always did it in the kitchen, not wanting to mess up any of the wooden floors.
With every drop of blood, my mind was able to release another fear, another thought weighing down my spirit. They would return later, accumulating through the day, but for that small bit of time, I felt unhindered by the chronic clenching of my heart that I suffered through the rest of the day.
I cut the same places each day, so as not to let the scars multiply. It became more painful every time I reopened the wound, and, in a way, more satisfying. The knife became stained a rusty color, painted with my blood, my beautiful blood. I hid it away, so no curious eyes would find it, eyebrows knitting at its curious color.
Every day I would cut deeper, trying to dig through to something, as a child would try to dig to the other side of the globe. I wanted to reach the purity I once had. It seems ages had past since I last understood innocence, and truly, I had been so young when I had been sent off to Frank, and that was taken away, subtly, without me noticing.
After a month, or more, tears mixed with the blood. I was so tired, so frustrated with myself. The blood was beautiful, but it wasn’t solving anything. I cut deeper and deeper, making desperate stabs. I wasn’t sure what I needed to get out. The pain intensified, and as the tears and blood combined on the floor, I finally collapsed into it.
The world exploded as I plummeted into that pool. Like the dream I had once experienced, it was burning, but as my skin blistered and peeled off, I was not my mother as before, but a monster, so grotesque, and to me, it seemed the epitome of treachery. Without seeing it, I envisioned traitorous acts, not only to Frank, but more painful, more painful than the burning, to Riff.
Riff was on his knees on the kitchen floor, his hand on my back. My shoulders were heaving, I had been sobbing, and the household had been roused. Columbia and Frank lingered at the doorway, and, oddly enough, the milkman. Riff pulled me up and lead me to bed. As we passed by Columbia, I saw she was holding my knife, unsure what to do with it.


I wanted my knife back. Riff had led me into the room and sat beside me, silent and still, through the last of my sobs. After I silenced, Riff made no attempt to speak. The stillness in the room changed; I could hear him thinking, searching for words.
Finally he cleared his throat. “You’re quite slow-witted, Magenta. You really thought you could get rid of something important that
way, didn’t you?” He lifted up my sleeve, revealing the red slash. “Why bother damaging this lovely skin of yours? It’s not worth it.”
I wanted my knife back. He was taunting me; I could just feel his pleasure in my distress. As I opened my mouth to snarl at him, he pressed his fingers lightly against my lips. My mind turned off and an uncontrollable fury took over, emanating from the epicenter of the cut. I snapped at his fingers and caught them between my teeth, causing him to exclaim in surprised anger. I pushed him off the bed and spat his own blood back onto him, taking advantage of his startled bewilderment to run from the room. Before I had gauged that he would have attempted, his hand came around from behind me, grasping my throat. Halting the air in my larynx and dragging me back to the room, he flung me onto the floor. We must have looked like two children as he straddled me, play-wrestling each other. His hands on either side of my face, he pressed my head to the floor.
“Stop it, stop it!” he was screaming now. “What makes you think you can do this to me? Damn you, Magenta, stop it! Stop making me love you! Stop being so beautiful, so pitifully desperate for love! Bitch, it’s an affliction, can’t you see that? I wasn’t meant to love you, sister,” he spat that last word. “I wasn’t meant to love you.”
I dared not speak. I looked up at him, opening my eyes wider, trying for the innocent look.
“I said stop it! Do you want me to scratch them out?” I closed my eyes. He was pulling off my clothes now, tearing off each garment with a harsh jerk. “I don’t want this,” he murmured. “I want you, but not this.” He wrapped his arms around me, around my back, pulling my dress out from
under me. “Don’t hurt yourself like that, Magenta, you only hurt me.” He turned my arm to the marks again, tenderly kissing the blood off my skin.
“That was against the rules, what you did. We’re playing a game here, and if we want to win, we have to follow the rules. I know them better than you do; you never were good with instructions. You need to listen to me, obey me. I’ve taken care of you since you were a baby. Remember, I’m your older brother, and I know what’s best for you.” This was sounding familiar. He pressed his body against mine, crushing me into the floor.
“Don’t do anything silly like this again, Magenta. Follow me, stay silent, and obey.”
His lips grazed my chin and moved down to my shoulder where he kissed my skin, softly at first. Then, unexpectedly, he bit down hard enough
to draw blood. “If you need to bleed, I’ll help you bleed,” he said, dipping his finger into the pool of blood by my neck and holding it to my
lips. By accepting this macabre offering, I accepted him. He relaxed against me, pulling off his clothes to mirror my bareness.
I lifted myself up to meet my brother’s body. I needed no more of a bribe than this; I was easily swayed when I had this on my side. The knife
slowly withdrew from my brain and was replaced with the brightest black.