I can hear my parents fighting in the kitchen, below my bedroom.
They're not supposed to do that.
It's wrong. It's selfish.
I hear mostly my father, anger seeping into his voice, and I imagine him unbuckling his belt the way he does when he prepares to teach me a lesson, his eyes cold. Only with my mom, not me. But I know he doesn't do that to her.
No.
He might not use his belt, but that doesn't mean he doesn't hurt her.
It's amazing how many different ways there exist of harming others.
I sit, now, on my bed and wrap myself tighter inside the warm cocoon of the rough gray comforter and try to drown it all out, nestling my head in between the two pillows propped up against the headboard. The cool fabric feels good against the hot skin of my cheeks and for a moment it distracts me from the staccato cries of my mother and the muffled sound of bone and flesh and walls and breaking dishes. I wish I could help her, I wish I could stop my father, I wish I could do something to make it all right, all better. Even though I know that's impossible, and the best thing I can do is just wait the years out until I can leave this house, I still wish.
Maybe it's my stubbornness, maybe it's the thrill of challenge that must run in the bloodline, maybe it's my instinct to protect, but whatever it is it makes me want to curl my fists and feel my knuckles breaking across his cheekbone. But I know I can't, not yet, not now; I'm just a scrawny little kid.
Sometimes I can see a glint in my mother's eyes that hint at things I can't quite place. Likely rebellion. As a little boy, with my head hidden behind the bars of the stairway's banister, fists clutching them like a prisoner to those of his prison cell, craning just low enough to see a sliver of them, mouths working, veins popping. As a little boy I could sometimes stay hidden long enough to see the glint in her eyes that would almost be bright enough to give me hope.
But then, as always, she would back down. One of the two would find their eyes roaming out of lack of further words to throw, dangerous, like knives, and they'd happen upon me. Sometimes, if this person was my mother, she would pretend she saw nothing. Other times, her expression would give her away. My father would turn. And that's when the belt would come out again.
Since then I have grown, developed enough common sense to know to stay in my room.
"This is not your business, Tobias," I can hear my father's voice in my head. "This is between your mother and I," it sounds. "It is not your place to pry, son." I picture him spitting out the word as if it were a deadly venom: son.
Do not be so selfish, he might say.
Aren't we all, I might ponder to myself.
And though those days of eavesdropping are over, somehow I manage to do wrong. Someone I manage to force my father into punishing me. Somehow it is all my fault that these bruises appear on my skin.
At least, so he says.
My father's words are jumbled from rapid shouting and my mother's words are drowned out by his, just a few small mumbles, attempts at reasoning.
My chest moves quickly and shallowly, fingers fluttering over the bruises he leaves on my arms, my back. Deep breaths sometimes help to relieve the heaviness in my chest, the dense yet empty darkness wedged between my ribs, slowly sinking down to my stomach. It doesn't seem to work this time. I curl my fingers over the edges of the arms of the too-big sweater that engulfs me and swallows me whole, pulling the sleeves tighter around me. The movement lets the sheets fall loose around my shoulders. A chill winds its way into the creases of the fabric, slinking around my body.
I sigh.
The act detoxes my system for only a second.
I sigh again.
There is a moment when it feels as if my worries are carried out on a breath, and the tension lifts off my neck and my back and I feel calm. But too soon they come rushing back and I have the urge to sigh once more, too feel relaxed like that again even if it is only for a fraction of a fraction of the time I need.
I can't do this anymore, pretending that everything is okay and will be okay.
Half-heartedly, I push off the blankets and crawl to the edge of the bed where I hang myself down, dangling halfway from the hips. Just far down enough to reach underneath, I pull out a little cardboard box that used to hold the watch I now keep on my wrist and grab at the blankets, messing them askew in the process of righting myself. My movements feel slow and lazy. I sit cross-legged, and worm around until the sheets are covering my lap. Only then, enveloped by the heat that my own body heat has created, do I slip off the square lid and peer inside, but an act of habit.
I already know what lays there: an old pencil sharpener from primary school, a pocket-sized army knife I stole from my father's bedside drawer a few months ago, a tube of healing ointment to put on them afterwards, and an ACE bandage to wrap it all up with in the end.
Every time my eyes fall on the army knife I am struck by the thought that he is not supposed to possess an item of such. It could inflict harm unto others.
Practiced, I know that the army knife's blade is duller than that of the pencil sharpener, so I'll feel the slicing of the skin, the stinging less with the thing that is normally categorized under "office supplies." I categorize it under "escape." I pull out the compact army knife, with numerous tools folded into one item just big enough to span the width of my palm, and flip around the contraption until out pops the miniscule screwdriver. The fumbling irritates the sensitive tissue beneath my fingernails, having just clipped them a bit too short for comfort. I rub the pad of my pointer finger over my thumbnail before disassembling the plastic from the blade of the pencil sharpener. The tiny screw spirals easily around, loose from use and the past knowledge of future need. I gingerly set it and army knife, when it snaps back together with a resounding click, in the box once again.
Holding the rectangle between my fingers, I lightly flip it over. The blade falls out into the palm of my hand. I toss the plastic and it reunites with its companions inside the cardboard walls of the petite cube.
The pencil sharpener looks bare without the metal, just as I look bare without the bruises and the scars.
I stare at the slowly-oxidizing surface of the silver before I pull down the drawstring of my pants and draw the thing across the inside of my thigh, just below the hem of my boxer shorts- wrists are too obvious, too cliche, too painful. I don't want pain, I just want relief, and for me they are not the same thing. Besides, no one can know what I am doing; I am not supposed to be doing it. A twinge of guilt pulls at my heartstrings. This is selfish, this is selfish, I am selfish. But no one will look there but me, and no one will know but me.
At first the beige of my leg turns white, then pink. Only when I am on to another thin line do I see the little droplets of blood rise to the surface, a strip of red.
When the cuts scab over, they'll look like scarlet dotted lines, embellishing my body.
Then when they heal, they will go unnoticed by all except for those who are searching for them.
I know.
I know because I've done this before.
The razor sears as it cuts its path over my leg and leaves a tingling, weak, tender wound in its wake. Every single time I put it up to my muscle a new weight drops in my chest but it is but a gram in comparison to the ton already there, dragging me down every second of every day.
The escape is worth it.
The distraction is worth it.
The relief is worth it.
I used to be afraid of the pain that comes with cutting, but not anymore.
The physical pain is caused by the other less tangible pain.
As I dig the corner of the rusting metal into my skin and pull, the pressure in my core drains out and dissolves until there is nothing left but the sound of my own breath and the thoughts inside my skull.
I cut the last one too deep, deeper than I ever have before, and blood runs out in a thick trail and slides down the side of my leg. It stains the gray sheets, absorbed, stunning. They contrast.
Thirty-two new lines, coming oh so close to crisscrossing each other, mimic my veins. They stand out, bold and bright against the other ones, the older ones that are white and wiry, like the manifestation of whispers. Bumpy. Prominent.
Notches in my surface.
Some days it is not so bad. Other days I might only cut one line, two. Other days I might not cut at all. On days like today, though, I can't find it in me to stop. So I need to find new patches of skin to break, because the cuts that show up are becoming closer and closer to one another, pin-striping my body with my own blood.
I grab a tissue and cover my thigh with it, watching as orbs of deep red color the thin white cotton.
And for now my father's belt, wrapped around his fist, is not a problem; for now, I can effectively block out the musical beating of my parents; for now I can go back to acting like we are the perfect family, with a government leader as a father, a kind volunteer as a mother, and a quietly respectable boy as a son.
If only they all knew that all of it was a lie.