she was ugly
.
.
She always knew she was ugly. From the scars across her face to the bruises adorning her legs to even the scabs forming on her mid belly. There was nothing beautiful about her. She was the work of Lucifer himself- crafted by his hands and molded by his ideals. Disgusting. When she looked in the mirror she could see this- could witness this. She wasn't pretty. She wasn't even average. She was just ugly.
She leans against the wall behind her, cigarette in hand. It burns, smoke wisping into the air. She watches it, thinking it would be so easy. So easy to just take a deep breath of it, pinch her nose, hold her breath, and just suffocate to death, the nicotine winding down her esophagus and twisting around her stomach. Plunging into her bloodstream, infecting her liver, her kidneys, even her heart. Especially her heart. Grabbing a hold of it and just choking, choking, choking. To easy, she thinks. To easy.
No, she can't go like that. In a brisk of smoke and tar and other miscellaneous things. Because she's always fantasized about some big, dramatic death, where her audience "oo's" and "awhs" as she's dying. Cries as she's dying. Maybe she goes out with a big bang, murdered while giving a concert in Times Square. Oh, or maybe she gives into a heart attack while being interviewed for a television show that's being broadcasted all over the world where people will see her go down.
They will see her.
She will not be invisible.
She refuses to be.
So she can't die yet. Not in such a mundane, predictable manner. So she'll live, enduring the pain she feels on a daily basis. But at least she has a reason to live. To die in the most spectacular of ways. She smiles to herself, thinking about how great that will be. But she realizes, in the meantime, she still has something to do. To carry out to feel at least slightly complete. Something that involves another girl. A girl named Jade West who has been plaguing her since she was little. So while she is waiting for her big moment, she decides to turn her attention on the black haired witch.
She puffs out a ring of smoke, watching it fly through the air until it dissipates into nothing. Into air. Just like she will one day. She takes her phone out of her pocket next and checks the time. It's getting closer to when Jade usually arrives. Excitement. That was one thing she always felt when Jade was near. Adrenaline wrapping around her veins, squeezing, getting caught in her throat, making her feel like she can't take another breath. That even if she tries her hardest no oxygen will enter her system and the adrenaline will just kill her. Euphoria courses through her when Jade even so much as spares a look her way. It spreads to every inch of her body, making her fingers tingle and spark, with lust, with fear, with happiness.
She wants her. More than anything she wants her. She always has.
So when she sees Jade's car finally pull up into the parking lot, she pauses, cigarette halfway to her lips. There she is, there she is. She thinks she's never seen anyone more beautiful. With a lavender purple highlight weaved into her long, curled black hair, and a full curvy body with make up masking her true beauty, she makes for quite the sight. Cat muses that she's never seen Jade without make up since middle school, but thinks she must look very pretty all natural nevertheless. One day she wishes to tell her this.
Cat watches Jade as she walks by at somewhat of a fast pace, her black combat boots clicking, clicking, clicking against the gravel. She's coming towards Cat now, and Cat can't seem to find a place for her eyes. The ground? Her cigarette? The lighter protruding slightly from her jean pocket? Finally she settles on the ground, watches as Jade hesitates just a little bit when she nears the red haired girl. Cat looks up to make eye contact, but Jade is staring at the burning cigarette. Still, she never stops walking and soon passes the smaller girl.
Cat feels like she is about to pass out. Smoking worked. The girl noticed her. She noticed her. That's all she could ever ask for. She slides down the brick wall, a dreamy smile sprawled across her face. She lazily props her arm up on her knee before taking an absentminded breath of death and blowing circles and circles of smoke. Jade loved to smoke. She loved to do smoke tricks. She loved drugs, she loved parties, and she loved alcohol, and sex and the whole shebang. That's why Cat did it. Because Jade liked it. And it got her noticed. It wasn't even in a negative way, like their encounters seem to be most of the time.
Positive. It was positive. Almost approving. Maybe if she looked hard enough, she would have seen a smile pulling at the corners of Jade's lips. Maybe.
She sighs, lost in her thoughts of Jade. If only she could love her back. If only. Then that wou-
"Cat...What are you doing?" She's pulled out of her daydream by a girl's voice. Tori's voice. Her smile fades and suddenly she feels disgusting again. Muddied. Grimy. Dirty. She looks at the cigarette dangling in her fingers ever so delicately. She tosses it aside.
Giving a nervous laugh she lies, "Oh nothing Tori!"
"You were smoking again."
She's reminded of her mother. The way the woman spoke to her about the stench Cat was making in the kitchen with all her damned addictions. "You're going to die. It's going to kill you," she recalls from the conversation. "I don't care, let me die," is the response she had given. "My pleasure." It wasn't spoken aloud. But she knew. She knew.
"No I wasn't! No cigarette over here Tori!"
"Cat I saw you throw it. You know, if this keeps continuing we're going to have to get you help," Tori informs her, a small frown on her face, one of pity, one of sorrow. "Now come on, we have to get to class." She extends the smaller girl her hand, which is taken, and helps her to her feet.
"Thanks."
The trip to Sikowitz's classroom is made mostly in silence, until Cat goes to take her seat. As she does, Tori walks away and mummers, "I'll never understand why you do that." It's not mean spirited, it's not meant to hurt her, but it does anyway. Almost as much as what the others say. The other kids in the school that is. Ones that constantly tease her and pull her hair and beat her. She knows she's odd. She knows she'll never be understood.
The class drags on for hours. She can feel everyone's stares on her. She can feel their eyes dissecting her, taking her apart, seeing her naked, exposed. See can hear their laugh's, hear their taunts. They're everywhere. They're in her ears, they're in her head, a pattern of mayhem and chaos splattered on the walls of her mind. She is nothing, they tell her. She is not worthwhile. She is not pretty. She is not kind. She is not pure. She is a slut. She is a demon. She is the spawn from hell itself. And she believes them, because they're inside her head, inside her heart. They never leave. The voices, they stay. The insults, they stay too. Everything stays.
She finally smashes her hands over her ears and runs out of the classroom screeching, "They're going to get me! They're going to get me!"
She's dismissed because, after all, that's just how she is.
She runs around the hall, all the way to her locker, and leans her head against the cold metal. She figures if she really wanted to she could just smash her head against it a few times and kill herself that way. But once again, no one is around to see. No one is around to care.
It's only a few minutes till the bell and when it rings she can hear the storm of feet pounding against the jail's floors. Because this is a prison. This is a prison for which there is no real escape. Even when one's eighty, they're still trapped here. Trapped in this god forsaken plain.
"Leaving early again freak?" she hears from behind her. She turns around to face Jade and, immediately, a smile flashes across her cheeks like she was never in a bad mood. Like she was never broken.
"Jade!" she greets her, the love of her life, the only one in this whole entire world that actually treats her good. Actually treats her how she is supposed to be treated. Because even though she's ugly, she still deserves some form of love, right?
"You're so pathetic." The girl gives a smirk when Cat's smile falters. "Sometimes I wonder while you even still bother to attend this school when, let's face it, everyone hates you. Oh, did I hit a nerve?" she says when tears begin to well up in the other girl's eyes. "Aw, I'm sorry, did I hurt the little girl's feelings?"
Cat nods her head.
Jade then deadpans, smirk completely wiped off her face, "Well to bad."
Cat looks at her pretty pink converse for a brief second before replying. "Did you see me smoking before?"
"Yeah, why?"
"No reason."
Another silence is shared before Jade adds, somewhat more quietly, "It's not as cool as it seems." She then leaves after another second, only one brief look thrown over her shoulder. For a girl that's made out to be a cold hearted wench, her look speaks of pain and sadness and Cat can almost make out a sorry ghosting on the lips of the pale, pale girl.
She heads off to her next class, a smile accompanying her, and when she reaches the place, sits down. That conversation is why she loves Jade. While being slightly cruel, the girl treats her like a human being. She goes over to talk to Cat, to actually engage her. In the end, something of value always seems to be said. It's not her usual encounters with people who only bully her and laugh at her. It's something better. It makes her actually not hate herself as much as she should, because even Tori treats her like crap. She can feel it. Feel it in her bones. While she appears helpful, she probably gossips behind Cat's back. Must gossip. Because everyone does.
Everyone except Jade.
Because Jade hurts inside too. She knows this. She sees it. Sometimes Jade comes to school and the girl is a complete mess, but nobody notices except for her. Because Jade only lets her know. The days when she's upset, she doesn't put on perfume, doesn't do her hair as nice as she normally does, and she says meaner things to Cat. Cat can tell she doesn't mean them all that much, because there is always that apologetic glint to her eye, like she knows what she's doing is wrong, but she just can't stop it, snared in an inescapable habit that owns her. Marked her. To make herself whole, she must tear others down. She must. It is the only way because perhaps if they begin to think they are less human than her, then they must be more beastly, and Jade is more human (she thinks), so therefore she is superior and she has less to feel bad about. Because maybe her ex boyfriend is wrong and maybe the man who took her innocence is wrong. Maybe she is worth something sometimes.
Cat knows she is worth something. Cat thinks that the other girl must feel the same way about her (love her that is). Because, after all, Jade has never physically hurt her and the things she says aren't nearly as hurtful as what some of the stuff other people say. Besides, she wouldn't go out of her way just to talk to Cat if Cat didn't mean something to her. And that excites Cat, because no one has ever treated her as nice as Jade has without being fake.
She seems to have traveled in some type of wormhole because as she is finally drawn out of her thoughts, almost all the students in the room have left. She gathers her books and begins her march into the hallway. As usual, she keeps her eyes peeled for Jade. Because of course she would. She loves her. She loves her to the moon and back. She loves her more than her own life. She l-
"Cat."
"I love you Jade."
"Come with me," Jade commands, nonchalantly, as if she never heard Cat, because of course she didn't. Cat only mumbled that, whispered it, as an afterthought. A part of her wishes she had accidentally said it louder. That Jade had heard, and been happy, and would kiss her and hold her and love her.
Cat follows instantly, like a damned puppy dog. Jade leads them outside, to the brick wall Cat was standing at earlier.
"I have to know. I have to know why you always greet me with such enthusiasm. Tell me."
Cat cocks her head cutely. "Why wouldn't I? We're friends, aren't we?" Cat smiles and giggles, oblivious. Happily oblivious. Happily stupid.
Jade frowns at her, eyebrows sloping down in anger. "Don't joke around with me and just fucking tell me why," she demands. Cat is taken aback.
"What do you mean? You're usually so nice to me," she grins.
"Don't play your sick jokes, are you fucking stupid?"
"No, I don't think so...?"
"Cat, I swear I wi-"
"I have no idea what y-"
Dropping her bag, falling, smashing into the wall behind her. Another punch is thrown, cracking her jaw against the bricks. She's thrown to the ground then and suddenly Jade is on top of her. "I told you not to mess around," the other girl seethes and she lifts Cat's head up and repeatedly bangs it into the gravel.
She can't talk. She can only feel and remember. Feel the fire blazing up her body, seizing hold of her, blood gushing from her cuts, from her head, from her fucking mouth. Remembers all the times this has happened to her. So fucking much. So fucking much. She recalls thinking Jade would never do this. Jade never would. But here she was, beating Cat, killing Cat.
Jade slams the other girl's head into the ground one more time before standing up and kicking her in the ribs, the metal used to hold the shoelaces in place on the shoe scraping against Cat's stomach. "Don't mess with me like that ever again." She can't move, only watch as Jade bends down to pick up her over the shoulder bag, and leaves. Through her bloody eyes she spots a bottle of pills and alcohol through the slightly ripped material.
Then she closes her eyes. She knows her head is cracked open, is almost sure her brain is leaking onto the ground, staining the gravel with its stupidity. She feels dumb for letting that happen to her. Just dumb. She was almost positive Jade would never hurt her. Not really. Yet here she was, a dumb ass, prey to Jade's fists.
She wonders why Jade suddenly turned on her. Realizes that maybe all along it was her imagination and Jade only ever hated her. Suddenly feels inadequate and wholly dirtied. Like she is a stain on humanity. Like she was only ever made to die. To be a tool for other's frustrations. She realizes now. Realizes it real well.
She opens her eyes again, spots her bag. Her phone is in there. She army crawls over to it, unzips it, reaches inside, grabs her lighter that she put in there so she wouldn't get caught with it in her pocket. She flips it open, turns it on, watches as the flame shoots out, an array of blues and oranges. Slowly, ever so slowly, she brings it to the hem of her shirt. It catches fire and starts to burn her skin, scalding it. Ruining it (because screw the death with the big bang she will never be worth anything). Although, perhaps ruining is the wrong word because she was only ever ruined. Scarred.
For the last time, as she's dying, she thinks to herself how ugly she is. She is unproportionate, with to big of eyes for her face and to small of a head. She is fat. She can feel the fat curling in her stomach, flipping over and over, can feel the skin hanging from places she has been cut. Feels how the fire is burning away her fat. She is stupid. She let herself be used. She let herself believe there was someone out there that could love her. She was wrong. She was so fucking wrong.
So she lets the fire consume her, dies as lonely as she began, without a big bang. Without anything worthy of mention. Word of her death spreads quickly, but fades just as fast. No one really remembers her soon. Not even Jade, which is a shame since the girl never found love either and never healed.
Cat died.
Author's Note: Because people only ever look for love.
Anyway, yeah, sorry for this unedited piece of...well, garbage! And no, if you are a reader from Soaked or like Raw Skin, I have not given up on them. I literally have no time what so ever to write! And I know that sounds like excuses and that's what I used to think when authors would put that kind of note at the bottom of the story, but I basically have no time to write. You might be thinking why I had time for this...Yeah it only took me a half hour (which was all the time I had available).
Any who, hope you somewhat enjoyed, sorry for the long note! Have a beautiful day :)
