Broken Mirrors Chapter 2

Blackfriar's was quiet. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday. There were a couple of people on the platform; a man wearing a suit and a bright pink tie was sitting on a bench, reading The Guardian. There was a woman with long brown hair, wearing a red coat. She had a pushchair. A little boy wrapped up in a thick coat was asleep.

I sat on a bench and turned up the volume on my iPod. I liked heavy music; the kind that my mother thought was satanic. I liked it because it drowned out the shit in my head.

I was my saviour.

I needed to make Borderline Monster shut up. She’d been so damn loud over the last few months, scaring me and making demands, telling me to kill myself, calling me a coward because I hadn’t found the strength to kill myself.

I wasn’t a coward. I thought that I was brave. I spent my evenings sitting on my double bed getting tipsy on cheap cider and slicing my arms and legs with a razor blade. It had been ages since I cried.

I hadn’t given in to her.

But drinking made her louder and more aggressive. She haunted my dreams. I lay in bed for hours trying to sleep and she hissed at me, until I fell into a restless sleep plagued by nightmares.

I looked up at the screen. The train was due in five or so minutes. I closed my eyes, and listened to the laughter and chatter of the workmen, working on platform 4. A child started to cry.

'Jump off the edge,' Borderline Monster said. 'Go on. You know you're not okay. You want to die. You're just too much of a coward to try.'

I stood up, started to pace, the hatred I felt for myself making me feel hot and bothered. I bit my thumb, and walked to the edge of the platform.

‘Go on,’ Borderline Monster said. ‘You’re so close now. I want to die. I want this pain to stop. I want to end it all and escape this shitty world. I’m not made for it. It hurts. It hurts so much. Why are they tormenting me and making me stay alive when I don’t want to? It’s my choice, isn’t it, if I die or not?

‘Do you really want to die?’ the nurse had asked at A&E a few days before.

‘Yeah, of course I do,’ I said.

‘Why are you asking for help, if you are so certain you want to die?’

I looked over the edge of the platform, imaging myself jumping down and lying on the tracks, waiting for the train to come and slice my into pieces, my blood and brains splattering the tracks and the platform and on the driver's window. It could be over in seconds. But I'd read on Google that it was one of the most painful ways to go. It was the quickest, but fucking messy.

'Hey! What are you doing? Stand back!' said a voice.

'Pardon?' I said.

'You're right on the edge of the platform!' It was the man in the bright pink tie. He had a Yorkshire accent.

'Oh,' I said, not standing back. 'I didn't realise.'

'Are you okay?' he asked.

I shrugged. Borderline Monster took over my consciousness and I dangled my leg over the edge of the platform, looking at the man with the pink tie for a brief second. Go on, dared Borderline Monster. The man grabbed me and pulled me back, his eyes wide with fear. I stared at him. What the hell had I just done? His face was deathly pale.

'Don't,' the man said. His voice broke and he took my hands, looking straight into my eyes. His hands were sweaty. 'Please don't. My cousin killed himself. My family have never recovered.'

'I'm so sorry,' I said, in barely a whisper.