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He wonders when this all started, this cutting and drinking and dissociating to feel. Was it when he was seven and Dad had started hitting him? Was it eleven and the numb anger that followed after Cally had killed- after what had happened with Cally. Was it in between that? Before it? After it? he didn’t know and Michael – or whoever he might be – doubted he ever would.
This wasn’t his first Halloween alone, not his first Halloween spent drunk and dissociated, spent with bleeding arms and legs and an empty head. He felt as if he was nothing. Nothing but air and years of trauma and bottled-up emotion waiting for the right time to burst out and surprise everyone. Blood trickled down his arm, it felt.. comforting in a way. It reassured him he was in fact real and could die. Knowing he could die was good because only living things could die. Was he alone in front?
The alcohol made everything fuzzy. He had missed drinking if only for the small respite of happiness it gave him. It disgusted him really, the taste, what it made him do, all of it. He hated it. His father had shown him enough times what it could do. If alcohol made Roberto angry and spiteful, it made Michael.. it made Michael.. it made him feel. It made him feel in ways he could control. He could control it and sure he’d spent weeks nursing hangovers with more alcohol but that was normal. That was what everyone did.
He could control it was the main thing; he could stop when he wanted. Just like how he could stop self harm. He could. He knew he could, he just didn’t want to right now. It was keeping him alive and sure, it was a shitty way of living but it was better than having to remember Roberto’s fists, he could control his pain. He could control it.
“Is that what you tell yourself to feel like less of an addict.”
He didn’t know if it was the alcohol or himself dissociating but Arthur’s voice felt further away for how close to front he was. Nevertheless, he ignored him and focused on the blood. The blood that was trickling down his arms, the blood on his thighs that pooled and threatened to spill and stain his bedsheets the crimson he so loved
It was ironic really, if you asked him what his favourite colour was and the reply was always “red”, it was such a pretty colour, red. Red. Blood, poppies, his hair, Roberto’s face during a shouting match, his legs, Chinese New Year envelopes, the wine he had stolen from Amé. She wouldn’t mind he hoped. She had other bottles.
Maybe she would. Not like she was here right now anyways, herself and her new boyfriend Axel were on a date. What was there even to do on Halloween but get drunk and wallow in misery watching horror flicks? He missed his old friends.
Did he really? Did he really miss the bullshit and pointless drama? Or did he just miss the company and the people oh so willing to pass round a bottle of cheap vodka and a fag. He missed Lia. She might have hated his guts in the end but she had been a good friend, had let him stay what felt like countless nights after Cally had- after Cally’s accident. They’d spent countless hours together, had promised to keep in touch after school, for fucks sake she had seen his self-harm scars when nobody knew about it and she had comforted him about it. All of that ruined because of that stupid stupid fuck Isabela.
He decided he didn’t care and took another swig from that bottle of, in his opinion shit wine. He didn’t even like wine, it had just been the first thing he’d seen after the bottle of Jameson whiskey and he had sworn never to touch it after Roberto. He could stop. He totally could, he just needed something tonight to- to feel? To stop feeling? For something. He needed it for something anyway. But he could stop, so it was alright. It helped the burning fade a little.
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Burning. Stupid cuts burned and stung; it was annoying. It was annoying and they didn’t feel deep enough. It was stupid, he knew they were deep, not deep enough for stitches – a sigh of relief from Arthur – but enough that the scars wouldn’t fade for a while. Was that good? Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t, his opinion changed on it; Arthur’s did not. The man hated how “mutilated” their body looked, said it made him feel “like he has been torn apart and stitched crudely back together”. Michael didn’t care, why should he? Still, he didn’t want to die of sepsis or something and the drunker he got the less likely he was to actually clean shit.
He could hear them, laughing and talking together. When had they gotten back? He wasn’t jealous why the fuck would he be jealous of Amé’s new boyfriend. It didn’t matter that he didn’t think it was odd Michael was living with her or that he had wordlessly handed him a cup of tea in his favourite mug after a panic attack he thought he had hidden well, he didn’t like him. Not after her last boyfriend, that bastard. He made his blood boil in rage. Tomás had padded into his room sometime around twelve and had fallen asleep on his bed so moving was out of the question unless he wanted old man claws in his feet. All that cat did most of the time was sleep or beg for treats.
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Getting worse and getting worse and getting worse but the world is slipping away from you like how sand slips away in an hourglass, like how time slips away when you don’t expect it to. Dissociating was controlling his world and he honestly couldn’t find the strength to care anymore. He was tired. He was so tired.
The blood had stained his arms a horrible rust brown and there were cherry red spots on his bedsheets. Oh well. They could be cleaned. It was meant to hurt, wasn’t it? It was. He was sure this dragging of metal through its skin, its flesh this meat that made it it was meant to hurt as it cut through and let forth its lifeblood, the ichor that told it it was and always would be. Its eyes blurred. Tears? Exhaustion? The bloodletting?
It knew not bar the release of this act; this holy sacred act was naught but exhilarating and drew the breath from its aching bound chest as fast and as ragged as that of a dying man’s.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Why do this Mikey? What fucking purpose does this serve you?” as annoyed as she sounded she was handling his arms with surprising gentleness, cleaning the dried blood off to see how bad the damage was. He knew it wasn’t bad, it had just been to feel something, to feel alive, because being alive meant he was a person and not just a shell of one.
If he had wanted to properly hurt himself he could have just pressed deeper.
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t sound it. And he wasn’t really sure he was; he couldn’t find it in himself to feel more than what he could at the moment. He hadn’t answered Amélia’s question either.
“Mikey.” She was nearly done with his left arm, the cuts were slightly deeper there and blood was reappearing from the reopened wounds.
“It..” he didn’t know. “I can feel things. It makes me feel human.” She snorted. She didn’t believe him, of course she didn’t believe him of course she wouldn’t, why would she believe him, she just thought he was crazy and was going to fucking kick him out again, he was going to be homeless again, he was going to die like Cally had. An addict and fucking crazy. He was going to die. She was going to let him die.
“If it stops you drinking I suppose it’s better than nothing. That was the thing; it hadn’t stopped him drinking. But you can’t keep doing this Mikey, it’ll fucking kill you. I can’t live seeing my other nephew die because of him. Do you understand? First Cally, and then you?-” she stopped abruptly, voice cracking with emotion.
He was so tired. He was so tired.
Just let it be over now.
Please.
Rain thudded, once twice, softly, soothingly, as soothing as Amélia. Even if she was going to kick him out. Even if it ended like this it was nice. Soft and gentle, if you could equate softness and gentleness with the sharp pain and drip, drip of blood on freshly ruined skin.
~~~~~~~~~~
He was not kicked out; he did not die on the street. He was not Cally. He was not Cally because Cally was dead. Cally was dead and gone and never coming back.
And Michael was still tired.