Page 17 of Penance

I’m mute, silent, broken.

I wonder if I’m dead.

I feel dead, and I think of my cousin Charlie, and what it is he’s doing right at this moment. He told me once he felt like he was a figment of his own imagination, maybe a reflection stuck on the wrong side of the mirror. He said sometimes he didn’t understand why he was here, and he thought of ways to get out. To justget. The. Fuck. Out. And I’ve never once related to that as intensely as I do right now.

My heart constricts inside my black and blue chest, the mottled flesh taut over my useless organs and cracked ribs. Stretched tight, my insides aching desperately with every breath. And I suddenly regret begging my social worker to let me stay with my mum. How I pleaded to stay with her, in that damp little hovel with no heating and mould on the ceiling, a toilet that never flushed properly and needles.

So many fucking needles.

How I would have to be careful where I trod when I woke up in the mornings after one of her benders. How I’d clean up her vomit from the cracked linoleum floor in the kitchen; pale blue and white checks turned yellow with age. Pick up the threadbare sofa cushions and generally put the house back together. All while dodging grabby hands from strange men I didn’t know and locking myself inside the bathroom whilst I cried, refusing to use the cold shower in case one of them picked the lock.

I think of my uncle, his weekly visits. How he would look so disappointed every time I said I wouldn’t move in with him and the boys, ‘cause I needed to look after Mum. How he’d crease his brow and frown, but not argue with me. I realise now he was trying to protect me. I thought he was trying to rip a crying babe from her mother’s bosom. But it’s only now I see what he was really trying to do.

Save me from fucking drowning.

Be the father I needed, one living outside of fifty-foot prison walls. Treat me better, buy me shoes that fit and wouldn’t give me blisters. Provide me with a warm, safe bed to sleep in, not a rotting mattress with a pillow as old as me and mismatched kid sheets. I never took his offered ‘pocket money’, I didn’t want Mum getting her hands on it and buying more smack. She’d scream at me during her come downs. Hiss and spit and cry. Hit me over and over and over until she passed out from exhaustion. But she’s dead now, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.

My insides battered and bruised as much as my outsides. Cuts, bruises, and scars mottle my pale skin. I only ever had one scar before I came here, on the back of my thigh. I got stuck on a bit of barbed wire fencing when me and Max were up to no good, we were always up to no fucking good. I needed fifteen stitches and half a bottle of vodka to get me through the pain. Turquoise-blue eyes flash in my mind then, but I banish them away, sending them into a dark untouched corner of my mind, shrouded in shadows and painted with blood.

Some of my new scars are white, some pink. Others, the fresher ones, raw and red, angry and fiery. Sometimes they cut me with a knife. They tell me I bleed for them because I refuse to cry but I don’t cry for themorbleed forthem.I would do those things only for me.

If I’m not dead yet I wish I were.

This is hell.

“Darlin’, please, come back to me,” Huxley pleads as I blink at him.

My whole body trembles, my teeth chattering, my mind dark.

“I need to get clean,” I say frantically.

Huxley blinks back at me, his eyes wide as I scramble to get off the counter. I fling myself to the floor, half crawling as I hurry to stand, pushing myself up on my split hand.

Everything about you is disgusting.

You’re nothing.

Worthless.

“I need the noise to stop,” I plead to myself, whispering, as my feet stumble to carry me into the downstairs bathroom.

Just like your junkie mother.

Nobody will ever love you.

Just like she didn’t.

Shecouldn’tlove you.

You’re unlovable.

Dirty.

Turning the shower taps with shaky hands, I twist the temperature dial to as high as it will go. Slamming the door shut behind me, twisting the lock with quaking fingers. I’m vaguely aware of Huxley banging against the door but I can’t hear his words, my ears are buzzing too loudly. My heart pumping blood through my useless veins, the dull thunk of it torturing me. The thudding hammering its way through my hand, my stitches pulling and tearing the skin. My already destroyed tendons screaming as fire bolts through them like lightning, my fingers numb and useless.

I need it all to stop.

I strip off my leggings and socks, my top still lost on the kitchen floor. Smearing myself with scarlet before launching myself beneath the scalding spray. Dropping to my knees, I sit beneath the boiling water, willing it to clean me.

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