Red Room

The room was dull red, like a speck of dried blood that dries upon the pale skin of a girl who cuts herself. It was adorned with frameless pictures that hung haphazard and crooked upon the walls of the dull red room, and everywhere there was a corner filled with the thick spires and dusty ropes of a spider’s web. Windows looked at you in question and wondered without a voice how they could be placed in such a place as this, and why the view was askew and nothing was what it seemed. The linoleum floor was spotted and sticky and grimy with things from yesterday and the day before and other day’s way before that so everything together just looked dirty and seemed like it was always and forever that way – and no one could tell any different.
She sat at the windows in the dull red room and looked out to see what she thought was there, but couldn’t really tell because the windows were askew and she always looked through the windows of the dull red room that were askew and only saw what she thought was there, but it wasn’t. She looked down at the dress that she thought was pretty – it was bought because it was supposed to be pretty – and folded her pale and boney hands with long fingers on her lap and felt the fabric of the pretty dress and it felt good.
She looked at her reflection in the windows that hung skewed along the walls of the dull red room and saw the scars that ran across her forehead and down her cheeks. They were dull and grey and straight where they were cut, but crooked and uneven against the natural beauty of the features that made her pretty. The scars were deep and formed a mound along the duration of the cut that protruded from her pale skin like a family of earthworms caught lying to long in the morning sun, and they gathered attention beyond the dull red room and caused people to stare until they were hit upside the head by a friend or relative who felt compassion for her and made to come out of it.
So she stayed in the house that had the dull red room, with the crooked pictures and windows that didn’t allow her to see what she was looking at or let her know the truth about what she didn’t see. This caused her to wonder about the things she felt but couldn’t explain and the pain that kept gnawing at the inside of her stomach that caused her to feel tight in the chest and made her inhale deep breaths into her stomach and gulp and gasp for the dusty air that stirred in the light of the dull red room. Other time she would feel the things she never saw and the things she never knew and they would mix with the dust that gathered in the corners of the dull red room until it formed at the bottom of her pretty feet and traveled up her pretty skirt and across her perky breasts until it swarmed and twirled around her throat until it spun a tight grip that choked her until dust covered her mouth and nose and face and she couldn’t scream for help - when this happened she became scarred to be alone in the dull red room, but couldn’t go outside for fear people would look and gawk and stare at her.
She looked down at the hands that were folded in her lap and pulled a small razor blade from out underneath her folded hands, and this made her feel bad but not as good as it did to make her feel the pain go away. She took the small razor and help it up in front of the pretty face with the deep scars and looked at the sharp blade that made her feel bad about herself but good about how it felt. She bent forward and looked into one of the windows that never showed anything for what it was, and she found a clean patch of pale skin to help her. She lifted the sharp edge of the small razor until it found the clean patch of pale skin and pressed it until the pale skin popped and the sharp edge of the small razor sliced an entry cut before stopping. She pulled the sharp edge of the razor toward her and cut a clean, straight line through the pale flesh that ran along and down her jaw line. Blood flowed freely from the fresh cut and it ran all down her face, across her neck and down onto her pretty dress, and she put her head back and felt the relief. It didn’t last long.
She sat in the dull red room with the dirty floors, crooked pictures and corrupt windows and thought of all the things she didn’t want to know and all the things she tried to forget and all of the things that she knew she didn’t know. and it was all too much for her.