Skin

What I want to do is run.

What I want to do is scream.

What I want to do is curl up into a little ball of nothingness and die, just curl up and die.

But I can’t run, I can’t scream, I can’t die because that’s not what he wants. He wants to make me bleed, but to never split my skin so the blood stays underneath the surface, staining it black and blue. He wants to choke me, lock his hands around my throat and tighten them until I can no longer breathe, can no longer get the air in and out of my lungs.

He wants to keep me alive, but so close to death that I’m not in the land of the living any more, I’m in limbo, that weird, twisted world where nothing makes sense any more.

What I want doesn’t matter.

What he wants is everything.
***


I’m not sure when things started to get out of hand, when they started to hurtle down that slippery slope at speeds that shouldn’t be possible, never faltering, hesitating, pausing for even a moment because it’s going too fast now to stop.

Was it always this way? I think back to the early days, try to remember them, try to see them clearly through the haze that seems to now obscure any happy memory I had with him. All I can see is perfection, perfection so pure it hurt. Handsome face, dark eyes, brown hair, lips red like scarlet drops of blood. Kind, caring, sweet, funny, always holding the door open for me and insisting to pay for everything – food, drinks, cinema tickets. That smile that used to make my legs do their own impersonation of jelly; the way he said my name that made me feel like bursting with happiness, pride, ecstasy.

He was perfection.

That should have been my first warning.
***


He told me that his name is Janus.

I told him that that was a weird name. He laughed and said it was the name of a Roman god, that his mother was a historian whose speciality was the Romans. He laughed again when he saw the look on my face and said it was ok, he wasn’t all that keen on his name, either.

When I put his name into Google later that evening I got back a picture of a two-faced statue.

That should’ve been my second warning.
***


I remember the day I got my third warning, the day he sunk his teeth into me so far that the next day there wasn’t just a hickey on my neck – there was an ugly black bruise the size of a fist, and little black scabs had formed over where he had actually broken the skin.

I remember asking him about it, asking him that night as we sat and watched TV, some shit movie I don’t remember. Hey, you bit me pretty hard yesterday. Check out the scar.

He smiled and asked me if I wanted him to bite the other side of my neck so I had a matching pair.

That night I couldn’t sleep for all the images going round and round in my head – images of blood seeping out of my neck and dripping onto my clothes, staining them permanently red.
***


But by the time I realised all these things were all warnings it was too late, it was just too late. He had his hooks, claws, fangs sunk into me and he wouldn’t let go, he was sucking me dry and he wouldn’t let go.

He wouldn’t let go.
***


I tried to get out.

I tried to break free.

I tried to get away.

But every time I looked towards the door he’d lock those eyes onto me, those eyes that told me don’t even think about it, don’t even think about it because I’ll hunt you down and hurt you, I’ll hunt you down and make you regret ever being born.

So I couldn’t get out.

I couldn’t break free.

I couldn’t get away.
***


I remember there was a boy once.

I can’t remember his name. I can’t remember how I know him. I can’t remember what he looked like.

But I remember there was a boy once.

I remember he was important to me. I remember a time when he was the centre of my universe, when he meant everything to me, when I would do anything to make him smile, make that beautiful laugh come tumbling out of his mouth.

I loved him.

But then we broke up.

We tried to stay friends. Tried to salvage the scraps of our relationship and meld them together into something resembling a friendship. It worked for a while. When we were alone, when we felt like there were no other eyes watching us or judging us or murmuring things under their breath, we forgot ourselves and being friends was as easy as breathing.

But those times were rare. Once in a blue moon. Awkwardness and leftover emotions haunted us constantly – or at least, they haunted me. I don’t really know how he felt. He was always better at hiding things than me.

We had a fight. It was too hard seeing him, too hard being around him, knowing he didn’t feel the same way, so we fought. Shouted. Screamed. He said what I was doing was wrong, that I was blowing things out of all proportion, that everything I thought I felt was just in my head and nothing more, nothing more nothing more nothing more nothing more. He kept saying that phrase over and over again, like if he said it enough it would make it true. Nothing more. Nothing more.

I told him I wasn’t sure any more.

The look on his face after I said those words is something I’ll never forget.

I severed all contact with him after that day. Ripped out all of his memories and forcefully extracted them from my mind, refusing to think about him ever again. But the cavity left behind made my chest ache, like my heart was trying to break but it couldn’t because I believed I was stronger than that. I believed that I could keep going, even though every time I turned out the light and curled up alone in my bed I felt like crying.

But I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry because I told myself that was stupid, that one day I’d find someone to fill that cavity and make everything ok again – even though deep down I knew that that gap deep within me could only ever be filled by one boy and one boy alone.

I met Janus two weeks after that fight, when the walls of the hole deep within my heart were still tender and weeping from where I had cut out the part that was dedicated to that boy.

I wonder if he knew that.
***


I wonder what the boy would think of me now. Broken arm, shattered rib, black and blue and purple marks blossoming all over my skin. Lying on the floor like a puppet that’s had all its strings severed and it can no longer move, liquid the colour of scarlet running out of a gash on my head and seeping slowly into the carpet beneath me. Nothing more than a broken, shattered girl with nothing left to give.

He would probably think I’m weak. Pathetically weak. He called me that once, teasingly, when we were messing around, sheets tangled around our legs and sunlight streaming in through the curtains at the bedroom window. He caught my wrists and laughed, said I was pathetically weak, then kissed me before I had a chance to protest.

I can remember how he tasted.

How come I can remember his taste, his smile, his eyes, but I can’t remember his name?
***


My head hurts.

There’s blood on my thighs, bruises on my stomach, bite marks on my chest, and my head hurts.

It hurts so bad.

Janus. Standing above me. Talking, the tone of his voice making the bile churn in my stomach, but I can’t make out the words. He has a knife in his hands and it’s pressed against my throat, against the throbbing vein of blood just visible under the surface of my skin.

Press a little harder, split the skin, kill me now.

Kill me now.
***

I remember how he tasted.