Summary: Faith, um, thinks. Yeah. She thinks.

A/N: Written 22.01.04.

I took a gun and shot myself.

Yeah, you heard right. I shot myself. And it wasn't a suicide attempt, like I know you're all thinking. No, it was just enough to hurt me. The metal pierced through my skin, and smoothly ripped through the pale flesh. It dug into me. Didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, though. Kind of a disappointment, if you really want to know.

I wasn't too impressed.

Afterwards I sat and stared. Waited to see how long it would take until the wound healed. 27.3 seconds. Not as good as last time. But then again, my hand wasn't shaking like I thought I was going to die. Last time, I thought I was going to die. But not today.

Not today.

Blood's a funny thing. Most people hardly think about it, if at all. It doesn't fit into their versions of life, their picture-perfect worlds. It doesn't taint them. I'm different; I know better than that. When the crimson slices of mortality come, they run, whereas I pursue it with an unfulfilled hunger. I sound crazy, don't I? Yet it's true. It's so true. The pain completes me in a way I can never understand, and every night I search for another way to reach the next level.

The next level. It sounds so perfect, so pure. I want that. I want to be pure. But not like them, no, never like them. They're too different, too close. To me. I need to get away, and not just for a late night walk whenever I can't sleep. Which is actually a pretty stupid thing to say, consider I don't even sleep any more. Something about lying there open, vulnerable. The fragility scares me.

It's times like these, when I'm carving the words in my arm or blowing open my insides, that I wonder just what the hell is wrong with me. How I got to be so fucked up. Was it something I said? A step I accidentally missed? Or am I really just supposed to be this way, alone and consumed in my own Godforsaken self? I don't think I want to know.

Instead, I'll just keep sitting here, watching pieces of me put themselves back together. Funny thing, the outside gets better while the inside just keeps shattering. I can't fix myself. It's too impossible, and the more I think I about it, the more scars I bestow upon this, my ruptured form.

The coolness of the gun brings shivers to my soul, and I reverently run the piece against my cheekbones, my lips pressed to the silky black death. I pause only when the tears set my freedom aglow, illuminating the trigger.

I shot myself today.