The bathroom light flickers above me. The blade is cold in my hand.

This is weak. And I'm weak. But I don't have any energy left to pretend. I don't want to pretend.

This is supposed to make you happy right? Release endorphins or something.

I begin to lower the blade to my wrist, but that seems too dangerous. What if I accidentally kill myself? That's something I would do. Or what if I couldn't resist?

I raise it to my palm instead, and let the cool metal rest there. I try to press and drag, make a clean slice, but I don't. I can't. I'm too weak to even do the weak thing.

Instead I trace the pink-skinned creases embedded deep in my hand with the tip of the kitchen knife.

Do babies have wrinkles in their hands? Are we born with them, or are they things you pick up along the way?

I start pressing harder, scraping the skin.

She believed me. I had prepared myself for all the things that could go wrong if she didn't believe me. Spent hours trying to come up with some kind of proof.

But she believed me, and it's a million times worse because she doesn't care.

No, thats not true. She cares very much. About her reputation, about his job, about money.

How can no one see I'm losing it again? How can they not see I'm drowning?

I'll bet they do see it. I'll bet they sigh and shake their heads.

I need to scream.

I need someone to hear.

A strong person would have forgotten. Forgotten and lived. Why can't I forget?

Because he's coming here, coming home, and because it could happen again.

Pain.

The knife presses between the atoms of my skin and i don't leave any time for second thoughts. I just yank.

The knife falls. Blood falls.

I imagine it's memories spilling out of me. Hot and painful and bad. I imagine the relief I would feel as they left me one by one.

Scared, confused, and cornered.

No voice, no help, no escape.

Him. Hot inside me.

Pain inside me.

Shame.

All gone.

I squeeze my palm until some of the blood drips in thin streams off onto the floor. I wish for each ruby drop to turn to pain. Pain that bubbles up out of me and slides off my finger tips to somewhere far away and out of reach.

But it doesn't work.

Yet.

I pick up the knife and wish again. And again.

And until three in the morning I perform an art I have mastered.

Trading one kind of pain for another.

one tangerine+one rice cake+one cup of tea= 50 calories=breakfast.

Mom leads a barely conscious Souta down the stairs and drops him in the chair beside me. His eyes keep slipping closed against his will between sloppy spoonfuls of cocoa puffs. Mom runs laps around us packing Souta's lunch and filling his backpack with necessary survival tools for the school day while complaining again and again that the clock says 7:30 when it should say 7:00.

These are the symptoms of a Monday.

Grandpa sits across from me. He watches me. I watch my tea.

I am halfway to school when I see him. I was enjoying the warmth of the morning, the wind in my face, the clean feeling of hunger in my stomach and the rhythm of my bike wheels against the street. But now I'm at the bottom of the hill and I see him. I don't know who he is or what he thinks when he smiles at me, but something about him reminds me of my Dad. My meager breakfast starts sliding back up my throat.

I am halfway to school when I decide it isn't really a good day for school after all.

I turn the corner at the bottom of the hill and circle back up to my house.

I want to go up to my room and listen to music and think. Where do I go from here? Even if I get through this, what am I going to do in life? I've already decided curling up into a ball and dying isn't an option. I won't let any of this beat me.

But I don't want to finish high school. I don't want to go to college. I don't want to get a job, get a house, get a life.

I want to go to the ocean. To lay down in the sand and let the tides carry me off behind the horizon. Then I would sink sink sink farther than anyone has before. I'd find something new. I'd find atlantis.

I'm walking my bike up the steps when a shadow shifts behind a curtain.

Who? Mom is at work. Souta is at school. I am here... Grandpa is at home. Crap. If he knows I'm ditching he'll send me right back. How can I get in the house?

I formulate methods of successfully climbing up to my second story window while strategically positioning my bike behind a few large shrubs next to the old well house.

He's coming home.

What am I going to do?

I lean my forehead against the well house door and sigh.

I'll run away and I'll never come back.

Because he raped me 3 times. He raped me three times and she believes me and she doesn't care. Because he's my father. Because she said "It's only for a year or two."

I bang my head against the wall and a few tears start falling. But then I hear the front door of the house open. I look up to see Grandpa walk out of the house and lock the door.

Hiding places... hiding places... um. I then realize that through the duration of my pondering I've been staring at a door. Duh.

I slide the well house door shut behind me carefully and hold my breath. His steady footsteps pass slowly. I turn and press my back to the wall before sliding all the way to the floor. My knees slide up to my chest and I wrap my arms around them. Then I cry. Because I was 10, he was my dad, and he's coming back. Because my mom must know that it's the reason I have an eating disorder, the thing that's caused her so much shame. I spent an entire year at a camp getting better. It took one sentence to wreck all of that. "Your dad and I are getting back together..." No. No no no nononono. Why? "We've run into a bit of financial trouble and God only knows how much your dad makes every year. Being a member of The Diet (japanese parliament) is nothing to sneeze at." My mother never wasted a chance to remind me that my "personal issues" (mom code for anorexia) were a danger to my dad's reputation and by extension job (money). Oh and let's not forget that I'm the reason their marriage failed too. My excessive outbursts and cries for attention (hummm I wonder why?) apparently ruined their relationship. I'm probably also the reason for world hunger. Or maybe my very existence prohibits world peace. In MomWorld, I would guess D. all of the above.

I bite down on the thick fabric of my jacket and scream. The scream turns back into sobs which trail off into chokes and sniffs as I become more and more aware of the strange noises all around me. Shuffle shuffle hiss crash. Louder and louder. My heart stops. I get the feeling that whatever it is is not human, and that it's very bad. I whip around and try to slide open the door, already calling for Grandpa. My fear is probably irrational, It's probably just a couple of rats. But right now I just have this really bad feeling, like... like I'm too close to a bad aura. Did I really just think that? No more listening to Gramps's stories for me.

It gets closer and my hands fumble in the dark, trying to get the door open. I'm desperate to be outside in the daylight, but it's too late. Four arms clamp around my middle and pull me back. I close my eyes and scream bloody murder. But then I notice a bright light flash behind my eyelids. When I open them, I nearly shit myself.

Everything around me glows blue. But thats actually super pretty, and definitely not what almost causes me to lose my deal. Four scaly white arms with claw tipped fingers are wrapped around my abdomen. Wtf?

I scream again and thrash out at the body behind me. Then the strangest thing of all happens. A bright pink light shoots from my finger tips and breaks off one of the arms. Which floats past my face. I scream louder than ever.

I hear a distorted cry that sends shivers down my spine just before the blue light vanishes, and I find myself alone at the bottom of our well.

Holy shit.

I need to eat more. I forgot how bad passing out and hallucinations can be. Now how can I get back up...?

I'm walking up to a wall which looks easy enough to climb when I trip over something and land flat on my face. That something is a scaly white arm with claws for nails.

It wasn't a dream.

I waste no tome crawling back up the well. I have to get out. I need a deep breath of fresh air. I need-

When I reach the top of the well sunlight burns dark patches into my vision causing me to topple out of the of the well and down a soft grassy hill.

Sunlight? Grass? What happened to the well house?

I sit sprawled out on the grass for a long time wondering what took me so long to crack. I mean, it's about damn time. With everything I've been through, I earned the right to lose my mind a long time ago.

I lay back and dig my fingers deep into the dirt, thin stalks of grass snapping under my grip. It all feels so real. Could it be real?

Maybe there was a serial killer in the well house. He reached up and slit my throat, but I passed out and died a peaceful death. My pale, four armed, scaly guardian angel then gently picked me up and escorted my soul to heaven...

That sounds about right.

I lift up a hand and twirl it in the sunlight. There's a light breeze playing with my hair and clothes.

Ahhh...

There are so many trees here... I've never seen so much green. It's so beautiful! I take in everything around me. The mountains, the bright blue sky, the Sacred Tree... The Sacred Tree!

But... So... I'm still at home?

I hop up to figure out what's really going on here, for better or for worse. I run as fast as I can through the trees, just for fun. I'm Indiana Jones, and some new terror is snapping at my heels. I dodge trunks and roots and vines all the way to the sacred tree and pray that I can just spend the rest of my life screwing around like this. Like I'm ten and he never happened.

I shove through a final green overgrowth and find that my exploration was in fact for the better. Because there is a (hopefully alive) gorgeous boy nailed to the sacred tree. When I say nailed, I am of course referring to the arrow piercing his chest and and presumably the tree. Thick, woody vines trap him against the tree trunk and his long silver hair twirls in the wind. His eyes are closed, but he just looks asleep...

"Hello?"

No response. Hmm.

Oh! His ears... So cute! They can't be real!

Two white doggy ears poke up on top of his head.

I have to touch them.

Normally I would not approve such inappropriate invasions of personal space (treat others the way you want to be treated and what not) but I am a self-proclaimed crazy woman now, and as such I am no longer responsible for any of my actions. I'm living the dream.

Without hesitation I hop up on a large root by the boy and reach up to graze his ears with my fingers. So soft! And warm too. He's alive!

I wonder if mom would let me keep h-

I completely loose my train of thought as about a billion arrows fly past my head.

"Get away from there!"

I mean to say, "No! you get out of here! This is my lunatic fantasy!"

But instead I say, "Aaaahh!"

And then, before I even know what's going on, I've practically been hog tied and thrown into some primal hut. Definitely living the dream.