[pre] Black. My room’s new décor matches my mood. The muted glow from the blue bulb above my head provides the little light I need to line my eyes with black kohl. I revel in the fact that the sun wouldn’t grace the skies for at least another hour, for I had developed a vampiric aversion to sunlight. Happy unthinking people associate their happiness with the sun, what’s so joyful about a ball of reacting gases?
Pulling on my clothes, I think absentmindedly of the convenience of my arm socks, hiding the self inflicted scars from the scrutiny of my peers and family. But such meanderings are cut short as I feel my daily cloud of gloom descend, the well worn cloak of darkness settling comfortably over my entire being. Today I had a special reason to resent the world and its inhabitants. The parental units, those conformist robots, united only against me, are making me leave the quiet solitude of my room. They are forcing me to see a counsellor.
The former Mr and Mrs Springs were too immersed in their own shallow world, their own petty arguments over the value of their material assets, to notice me. My grip on my once stable world was lost and I would have drowned in a sea of my parents’ selfishness had a new group of friends not taken me under their wing. They showed me how life’s sorrows could make me stronger; how being happy and colourful had left me vulnerable. The male robot left our house to be with Her but by then I simply told myself I’d lost any sentimental feeling for him. The female robot sank into the comfort of the grape and only rose out to ground me for adding to my collection of piercings or dying my hair to match the shadows that grew inside my heart. Being grounded gave me peace and time to reflect on life. I welcomed the change from the bright, busy world outside.
Now those same robots are worried about poor, sad Hope so I have to go sit on some quack’s couch and tell him how I truly feel. He will then announce I'm depressed because I hate my mother. That simply is not true! I hate my father more for straying to Her, returning only to tell me he truly cares as he takes more of his things and my mother’s sanity.
I glance briefly around at my room. There are no happy memories here to hold me back. Impatiently I toss my choppy fringe from my eyes and judge the distance from my window to the freedom below. I hang my legs out the window and drop. The thrill of falling is a new sensation; sending adrenalin surging through my veins. The high fades when I land, as if the fight or flight drug knows it won’t remain in my blood for long.
Without bothering to look back at the building in which the robots had tried to imprison me, I stride away. I walk on autopilot through the deserted, pre-dawn town while my head harbours murderously angry thoughts. How dare they even try to understand what goes on in my mind? Robots as shallow as my parents would drown in the depths of my thoughts.
I arrive at the river. Swollen and opaque, it swirls angrily, yearning to be free of its banks. Stray vegetation is dragged to its doom. I lie on a rock with my head inches from the water, daring it to come and get me. My mascara drips darkly into the swirling eddies: momentary teardrops, whisked away.
I stare at the murky water for a long, captivated by its eternally changing pattern. Finally my need overcomes the hypnosis the eddies have over me. Spinning over so my toes now dangle in the icy water, I slip the metal out of my pocket, its bite on my fingertip confirming its sharpness.
I roll up my jeans. With the ease of experience, I angle the razor blade and slowly slide it up my leg, a new train track forming beside my shin. I savour the sting of power as my skin slits open. My head rolls back as the pain reaches a crescendo, my body shaking with the effort not to voice a sound. The release of my pain is a drug; faux euphoria filling the recently vacated place in my veins. As I watch red trickle down my leg to join my black tears among the eddies, I wonder how I could have so much control over my own life and yet so little.[/pre]
