Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 81597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 408(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
I would take it out during the middle of the night and stare at it in my hand, just like I was doing now. My heart was so swollen, the pain radiating from it drilled right into my veins and circulated around my entire body. I tried to think of Mason’s words – to come to him first. But he wasn’t here, and the probability was that he wouldn’t be for a long time.
The pain of that realization was too much. It was crushing me from the inside out and I needed it to go away. I needed to let it bleed, to let it drain from my body before it suffocated me. So instead of tucking the knife away again like I usually would, I placed it against my thigh. I didn’t have the energy to care where I was placing it, whether it would be easy to hide. What was the point? Nobody was going to see it while I was rotting away in here.
I ran the knife edge across my skin, but of course it left little more than a slight scratch. I pressed harder, and again nothing happened. Frustrated, I threw it down onto the mattress, only to pick it up again when an idea crossed my mind. The walls were painted, and it some places the white paint had chipped away, revealing exposed stone. A couple of grazes against the rough surface might sharpen it just enough to break the skin, so glancing over to make sure my cellmate, Razz, was fast asleep, I crept out of my bed and crouched down between the steel frame and the toilet. Gently, I rubbed the knife up against the wall, testing out how much sound it would make. Not too much, so I did it again only a little harder, this time causing tiny specs of stone and paint to fall to the floor like glitter. I kept my eyes on Razz the whole time, stopping when he grunted and turned over in his bed. Just a couple more strikes, I decided, and after doing so, I used my T-shirt to wipe the dust clean from the shiny metal and climbed back into bed.
I ran my fingertip over the enticing edge once again. It still wasn’t sharp by any stretch of the imagination. It couldn’t have done nearly as much damage as a blade, or as easily either. But it was all I had and I needed to try. I felt like I was dying. Choking. Like there was an invisible rope tied around my lungs, pulling them up towards my throat. Dragging in a deep breath, I placed the knife firmly against the flesh of my thigh. I knew I would have to dig deeper than usual with it, and that it would hurt more, but that’s what I wanted, what I needed.
I dragged it across my skin slowly, meticulously. It was dark, but when I lifted it away I could just about see a few tiny bubbles of blood starting to pop from the surface. The sight of it fueled me, fueled me to go deeper, to open it wider. Those tiny bubbles were merely specks of sand in a whole beach of pain that was quickly burying me alive. At least I had a starting point now, a small gap in my skin. Tucking the tip of the knife’s edge snugly inside, I inhaled again while I pushed down and dragged even harder. The relief caused me to sigh. The pain in my heart trickled from the wound and down over the top of my leg. It throbbed, letting me know it hadn’t finished, and I rested my head back against the wall, closing my eyes and letting the hurt bleed away.
After several minutes the blood started to dry, coagulating in sticky clumps on top of the fresh scar. But it was still there – the anxiety, the memories, the fear. So I repeated the process, then again, then once more, before my leg was pulsating so intensely with pain that it was all I could focus on. I’d done it. It took me almost an hour but I’d succeeded. I’d redirected my thoughts, passed on the pain to an area I could cope so much more easily with. And so, after giving myself a quick clean up at the basin by the toilet, I held a clean T-shirt to the wounds while pulling my sleep pants up with my free hand before climbing back onto the hard, lumpy mattress.
Feeling more relaxed than I had done since I arrived, I tucked the blanket right up under my chin and stared at the faint ribbons of moonlight filtering through the bars at the window until I eventually fell asleep.
“Watch where the fuck you’re going, arsehole!” a burly guy who I’d accidently knocked into yelled at me as we queued up for dinner.