Borderline I: A Taste for Blood

Borderline I: A Taste for Blood


Shit! I told him I wouldn't cut today. Well, fuck it. You can't have everything you want, Hilary thought, as she made the fourth parallel scratch on her left forearm with the blade she removed from her disposable razor. The cuts weren't bleeding much. She hadn't cut too deep. It was more for stimulus. More to feel something. She had been extraordinarily depressed lately even with the extra sessions and cutting took her away for a while. Guy would know though. Shit, she thought again. He knows I'll show him. Then he would ask her why although he already knew the reply. Lots of them knew the response. Guy knew the effect. He knew why she did it. He knew it helped her feel something. Asking was just his job. He would ask and then he could write it down for his report. Every day they would meet at four and he would write down everything she said. Even if she said it yesterday or repeated it again and again. He had to write it down. He said that writing it down would keep her at his unit and she wouldn't have to go up the hill to the big house. He said that it would help her get passed it by understanding its power. Help her to stop cutting.

Hilary hated the big house. None of the staff gave a shit about her when she was up there. They just pretended to care and identify and agree with her. Then they would lock her in those shitty little rooms with nothing to do. She fuckin' hated being up there. She moved the blade over and cut again. Another bright straight line that seemed to release so much pent up pain. She could watch the blood run down her arm and knew that it was releasing the poison from inside of her. The poison that was her mom; and especially her dad. The venom that they had injected her with for all those years. She picked up the cup and held it to her skin. The blood slowly flowed over the lip and into the cup. She was now seventeen but for fourteen years she put up with their prison, their poison, their lies, and their abrupt and rapid mood changes that made her believe that she was the crazy one. No, they were the fuckin' crazy ones. Mom with her ignorance of what was really going on. How she would constantly defend the old man? Deny that he was the monster that Hilary knew him to be. How could her mother be so fuckin' stupid not to see it in his eyes? His vacant, cold eyes. How could she love a man that would use her child as if she was nothing? Like a dog. No, less than a dog. Like fuckin' nothing. He always treated her like nothing. Like she wasn't there.

But she got away from them for now. When she started cutting they paid attention. They said she was crazy because of a little blood. It didn't even hurt her. It didn't hurt because she was one of those who needed to feel the pain. Needed it to feel at all. Because before the pain she felt nothing. Oh, when she was very young she felt things. She felt it when he took her from behind when she seven years old. She felt it and screamed at him to stop. He never did. And that Bitch of a mother never believed her. Even when Hilary showed her the blood. She wouldn't believe that her husband, her saint, would ever do anything like that to child; a baby. Especially his own child. So she had to stop feeling it because she couldn't stop taking it. She couldn't stop him from doing what he wanted with her; to her. She had to shut out the pain and make like she was nothing. Then it wouldn't hurt. But that didn't work for long because then she didn't feel it. And soon she didn't feel anything. She had forgotten how to feel at all. So he could do what he wanted and she would just lie there. Like a doll, a rag doll. Empty. Empty with no feeling. So she herself had to bring the feeling back. Because no feeling meant no life. And she wasn't going to give up that easy.

Even as she felt like nothing for all those years she still learned. She learned not to trust people; people like parents and adults. People who should have loved and protected her. People she should have been able to trust. But there weren't any. Oh, maybe she would talk with a counselor in these places whom she wanted to trust. But they went home at night. They went home to their own comfortable lives and their own comfortable families and they forgot all about you. They forgot about you until tomorrow when, if you let them, they might get to you again. Then, again, you would want to believe them. Then they would move you to a better place; after they told you how good you did there and how much better you were getting. After they promised you that the next move would take you to the "right place for you." But then it would just start all over again. The new people would tell you that you had to earn their confidence. That you had to do well so they could get to know you; so that they could learn to trust you. But they never would. They would never trust you. Because you were a cutter.

She read about cutting from the pages of the Suicide Queens. A group of women that had much experience with pain and doubt. Woman with many attempts at suicide. Some successful, but mostly unsuccessful attempts. Through their failures they found much experience and knowledge. About the business. Their business. The business of depression, of dying, of death. Most of them didn't really want to die. No, they liked the lifestyle of the near-dead. The dark black world they showed each other through their own close encounters. Encounters with pain and suffering and living with it. They created an existence by pushing the envelope and enjoying the sensation of bloodletting. They talked of the relief, the joy that the flowing and control of one's own blood would bring to them. They liked the control. It made them feel alive they said. Alive on the edge of death. They described the sweet and loving sensations of warm blood. Blood, life, and death; all in their control, at their command.

When she first read about those women it was so very familiar. Especially the draw of the blood. Like a hidden memory; a vague feeling she couldn't place. An annoying itch that plagued her. An itch that no amount of scratching could relieve. Mere scratching couldn't reach the itch; the pain. It was far too deep. It called for more than scratching; far more. It required penetration.

She didn't remember when she started cutting herself; she just knew it provided her with great relief; and great pleasure. She would cut slowly, feeling each stretching of the skin by the blade. It would burn. Each time the blade touched her skin it would burn exquisitely. The burn felt so good. It felt ... alive. She felt alive. She would watch the blood gently flow down her arms and pool on the floor. And with the blood the poison. It left the blood and melted into the air. By releasing the blood the poison itself was released and she was left with only the blood. Her blood. Then she learned to use a small cup to catch the blood, so as not to waste it. She would swirl the blood around in the cup and realize that she had the power. The power to control her feelings. The feelings that were hidden in the blood. The power that was hidden in the blood.

Then one day, she didn't remember when, it came to her. If the blood held the power it was senseless and stupid to waste it. Stupid to throw away her feelings and her power. At first her thoughts scared her. She felt slightly sickened by them. But, it was her blood. Her feelings. Her power. Why waste it she reasoned. Why not keep it; return it to the source. Garnish the power. Replace the dead feelings. But, how, she thought? Could she inject it back into herself? How could she do that, she thought? There was no way. It would be too complicated. But, there were others that understood the blood and its power. They knew the way. They took the blood; they consumed it; they drank it in. They would drink their own blood and the blood of their Lovers. Hillary was entranced. She could do that. She could do the same as they did.

So she came to drink the blood like the others. Her blood. She took back the power. Her power. It was so much easier and sweeter than she could have imagined. It was always warm and syrupy and thick, like the freshest, purest honey. She found it so very satisfying. So Powerful. So Liberating. And secret. So very secret. Her secret. Her Secret Life. A Secret she believed was her only course to Survival. She wasn't aware that her course had been set long ago; that the secret she kept had been forged before her time. Before the cutting. Before the Bloodletting. Before she was Hillary again. A secret decades in process. Locked away in a memory. A Secret of Another Life. Another Reality. A secret of Survival. A second chance at Life. A Re-Birth.

She felt power in revealing her cutting to the counselors. But consuming it was her secret. They would do more than put her in placement and therapy if they knew. They would prevent her from doing it: her bloodletting. They might even label her, stigmatize her, call her...Crazy. She couldn't let that happen. Not now that she came to understand how she could keep her feelings, her power; and never, ever again endure a life of dead empty emotions.

She wondered to herself if these people she had read about, these Vampires, actually existed. Were they just legend, or did they believe in the same secret power that she had discovered? Did they actually kill people or would they just bleed them for their own needs? Could she drink the blood of others and thereby gain their power? Such questions caused her head to spin. Here she was in this stupid placement just several months short of eighteen and such new ideas had come to her. Could she wait it out? They would leave her out on her own when she reached eighteen if she wasn't in the big house. But if they marked her at eighteen they could put her away for years. If they knew that she consumed her own blood they would do just that. Assign their labels and lock her away. So she needed her counselor Guy to keep her in this unit until she turned of age. She needed to convince him that she was, "doing better," and that he could keep her with him for now. It would be four o'clock soon and he would be coming to see her. She needed to make plans. She needed him to believe her, to help her, to trust her. She had precious little time to do it. To convince him.

After the cup was full she raised it to her mouth. She felt the warm, sweet, thick liquid slowly trickle down past her lips and over her tongue. She stopped and closed her mouth. She swished the blood around as if she were tasting a fine wine. She tilted her head back, and closing her eyes, letting the tepid, crimson broth slide down her throat. For a moment she felt dizzy, her head spinning. There were no hands on her body holding her, moving her, forcing her. She was hundreds of miles away, flying through the air, unfettered by life and its shackles. She squeezed her eyes tight trying to hold on to the feeling. But it was fleeting, so very fleeting, as usual. It had come and gone in a moment. Yet for that moment she was free, really free. She had once again escaped their bonds and their lies. She was her own person, her true self, for that one moment. That one racing moment. Then she heard the knock on the door.