Scarification

A/N:

!!! If you have any problems reading about blood, cutting, carving, slicing or scarification, please turn back now. !!!

Do not flame me - I warned you in an advance, and it's up to you to continue reading or not.
This first piece is just the icing on the cake, and much more grotesque themes will work their way in on the next installment.

If you do not know what scarification is I highly suggest you look it up. I tried to post a link, but all that did was fuck up my story's HTML layout. - In short, it's a form of extreme body modification that's similar to tattooing, except instead of ink you slice the skin and cut it to form pictures. It scabs up, and then you tear the scabs up and repeat the process until the cuts become permanent scars.

This not a oneshot, and it is not an on-going chaptered fanfiction. It is, however, a two shot. So expect one more chapter/piece to finish this up.

Roxas is just another statistic. He is one in a million - he is a single 0.01 in the 14.9 percentage of depressed college students that exist.

He is a cliché and a stereotype and it doesn't help that he's majoring in fine art. Once upon a time he used to cut - pressed razors into his pale skin until a thin line of blood would spurt from the slice, until the lines and gouges marked his wrists and trailed his legs and wrapped around his stomach.

Once upon a time, Roxas used to cut himself to feel something - because feeling pain is proof that you're still alive. That was until he noticed all of the long-sleeved shirt wearers in his classes; all of the girls who wore too many bracelets wrapped around their wrists; all the students who wore jackets in the middle of heat-waves, and then Roxas realized that cutting was not special. Cutting was not original, just like his oil paintings were not original, just like everyone else's charcoal sketches of the same landscape were not original.

Even in his pain, in his depression and misery, there was beauty that he needed to harness. And so the lines and the gouges, they became shapes. The slices on his stomach became flowing spirals, winding spider webs, and carves of the moon that bled through his shirt whenever he picked the scratches away.

Roxas does not have any friends. He has classmates and he has teachers and he has room-mates who couldn't remember his name. He has acquaintances who rode the same light rail train as him, and that was it.
Roxas does not have any friends, so he does not have anyone to leave a letter for. He does not have anyone to call as he shut the heavy door to the large, open room that was home to a small indoors fountain that the rest of the city had forgotten about.

He doesn't lock the door because the bolt had rusted into place and there was no point in the first place - no one ever came here, he had made sure of that long before picking the place out.

Roxas settles beside the fountain's edge, and pushes his sleeves up to his elbows. Nimble fingers grasp the razor he has brought - not a blade, you could only get defined lines from a razor - and he presses deep upon the skin on his right wrist.
No expression of pain touches his pale, angelic features, and he presses the sharp edge deeper. Crimson spurts upwards, puddling around the silver razor and staining the edges before he begins to draw. Down, he curves, zig-zagging slowly across the main artery in his wrist. Down further, until he's almost reached the fold in his arm, and then he pulls the razor off.
Blood runs in thick trails down his arm as he tilts it, and the heavy droplets fall one at a time into the water he was so close to.

Again, Roxas brings the blade down, striking the main artery dead on, and he drags it downwards. The artery slowly shreds, opening wide and blood spreads like black roots around his wrist, pulling downward from gravity and falling at a faster rate into the water.

There is a sharp sting of pain in the back of his mind, but it is too hazy and too far away, so Roxas digs deeper to reach it. The small razor is dug so deep that it's tip is completely engulfed in the skin and can no longer be seen. He can feel the sharp edge dragging along his insides, tickling the hidden muscles in his arm, kissing the tendon that runs so close to the artery.

Up, he goes, to fill in the blanks in the canvas that he's left behind. He thinks of shadowing, of definition and the black and white and red color scheme as he paints.
Abruptly, his vision swims and he realizes how deep he's cut - how much he's carved. He still has a whole other wrist - an entire canvas to create something beautiful, but he's forgotten he was under a time limit and has wasted all of his precious time beautifying one.
The razor stops, but there isn't enough time and his head is already nodding forward without his free will to stop it. No time to make it beautiful, but time enough to make sure this piece of artwork doesn't go half finished.

He switches the razor to his other hand, and the sticky blood coating it feels just like water-color paint on his clean fingers. He swirls the razor, rubbing it against his fingers and doesn't notice when the edges catch his skin and rip his fingers.
Roxas dips closer to the water, sinking his finished arm into the murky depths to wash the blood from his paint-brush and the blood - which was beginning to slow in pace - begins to come forth with a new appetite. It stains the water within moments, the cloud of liquid red slowly spreading to engulf the entire fountain's pool, and Roxas is reminded again, of his time limit.
He brings his arm out, wavers on the edge of the fountain's cold brick encasement, and quickly presses the razor's tip to his un-marred wrist. He presses hard, and brings the tip down quickly, slicing the artery sloppily and missing in one or two spots.

"Disgusting," He scolds himself angrily, upset that he's wasted so much time and now must rush another piece. He goes quickly to clean up the slice, shredding the artery once more, deeper, and the blood snakes out in rivets.
The cuts are deeper on this wrist, because his mind has gone hazy and it's difficult to see properly, but he swirls the blade up his wrist, zig-zagging to attempt the same picture he's already painted on his left wrist. It's harder with this hand, as well, because he's always been right-handed and the picture is looking less and less like a mirrored reflection and more like a sloppy copy cat's attempt to rob his piece.

He doesn't finish in time.
Curving up again, his fingers go numb and he looses his grip on the razor and it tumbles down, down into the murky, stained water. Roxas is left to gape and stare after it, but he does not attempt to save it even though the silver winks at him with every ripple of the water.

Instead, Roxas leans forward. A soft splash echoes throughout the abandoned chamber as he lets his body drop into the shallow water - just deep enough to submerge his wrists completely, and not deep enough to drown him - and the boy - this depressed art student statistic - closes his eyes for the last time.

In his hazy unconsciousness, an angel visit him.

The angel has long red hair, the color of fresh spilt blood, and captivating emerald eyes. His angel leans in close enough for him to see the disapproving way his lips are turned down and the matching tear-drop tattoos underneath his eyes.
His angel, he whispers, "You've done it all wrong," and hauls him up out of the cold.
And then the world goes black.

reviews would be fantastic.