It was innocent. I was cleaning my teeth, dropped my toothbrush and knocked over the glass. It had shattered and as I tried to save it the shards cut my skin. Small little cut on the inside of my palm. It hadn’t hurt. I watched the blood drip from my hand into my white sink.

I picked up a piece of glass and made another cut, the same size as the other, again no pain. How far would I have to go until it hurt? Until the sting of the glass in my skin was enough to make me stop? How many cuts would I have until the sink was red instead of white? How far would I have to go before anything hurt, before anyone noticed?

I looked at myself in the mirror. I know there’s something wrong with me, I know that I’m not right. There is a reason why my friends think I’m strange. They think I like to be on my own, but I don’t. I like to be with people, when I’m with then the urge to cut is gone. Life is real and I’m living it. When I’m on my own life’s a memory, nothing more.

One person. He understands, because he cuts himself too. Every time he breathes he cuts himself on the inside. Every time he fights he cuts the delicate skin in between his knuckles and they bleed. A minuscule amount of blood and a fraction of a second, but there still cuts. He gets it, but would he understand this, would he know how far I have to go to actually feel it?

I need to stop this, it’s the eighth night in a row that I have stood in front of my mirror and watched as the glass slides into my skin. I cleaned away the broken glass, but kept one long shard. Just one, I only need one. Wearing gloves all day, no one sees. No one knows. No one cares. Why would they? I give them no reason to. I smile, speak and joke. I play and lean and fight by their sides, but alone I’m just that. Alone.

They whisper. Inside, inside me they whisper. They know why. They don’t feel either. They come to the fore, watch through my eyes and lick my lips as the blood falls. They want me to hurt myself, they want me to feel. Why? Because if I don’t feel then neither do they. They’re nothing existence locked inside the consciousness of a girl would be nothing if I didn’t feel, if I didn’t have skin that was so sensitive, so delicate. So easy to cut.

I turn my hand over and cut along the back, this time its deeper. I’ve been getting bolder, making more of an effort, cutting harder. It not enough anymore. That initial little sting of a scratch isn’t enough. Hissing at the contact. My eyes rolling into the back of my head, a small smile tugging at my lips. That’s it. The hairs on my neck stand on end. Goose flesh arches across me and I shudder. Heat pools between my legs as I press my thighs together and the blood keeps dripping.

I raise the glass again. press into my flesh, I hear as it tears, see as it opens and begins to pink with blood. My hands are grabbed and my back hits the wall. He towers over me and asks why? Why? To feel. I can’t feel. He says that if I drop the glass he’ll make me feel. I tell him no, that if he wants me to feel, he has to use the glass, because the glass knows, it knows what to do.

He lets out his claws, all six, shining with hidden promises of touch and sensation. I drop the glass and his mouth closes onto mine. My night-dress is cut first, away from me. He isn’t careful because he nicks my stomach, a small one that doesn’t bleed, but it stings. But the sting is never enough.

His t-shirt and jeans are peeled away slowly. Then he cuts my panties. Another un-careful nick on my outer thigh. Maybe he is careful, maybe he knows. He knows. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He lifts my thigh and he is inside. His hands flow up my body, the flat edge of his blades caress over my skin.

He puts his hands either side of my head, claws facing out. His only movement is the gentle kissing on my neck and the forceful thrusts between my legs. He tells me to put my hands over the top of his.

I get it. My hands rest on top of the blades. I can feel the warm metal beneath my fingers; his movements make me unable to keep still. My palms sting as they cut in, as they graze me. My body stings. I moan and press my fingers onto his hands, onto his blades.

The blood runs down our arms and finally, finally I can feel. He can feel. I can feel him and its enough, its right, just right. He can feel me and he knows that this is it, this is how we can both feel, how we belong. To each other, through the cuts, through the blood, through the feeling. Through the pain of loving till it bleeds.

-END