Author's Note: I don't know. I'm too tired to sleep.


People don't usually listen.

They usually just hear. They usually can listen, but hearing is easier listening, and on the off chance they do listen it is unlikely they will understand. And you're not really good at words anyway, which makes this even more futile of a task.

You'd rather talk to razors, because metal understands.

Blades do what you ask, they know what you want, they readily follow your guiding hand.

You swipe them along and the pain they provide you with is just enough, just necessary, that sting that makes you feel normal.

You need it. You're immensely attracted to people who hurt you, but when they're through hurting you they always leave because they don't listen like metal does.

Steel listens. Steel listens to the grip of your fingers and the rhythm of your breath and steel knows why you need it. You're too accustomed to pain to function without it, you think you like it, and pain needs you too because it is existent only in sensation and if you don't feel it, it simply isn't.

You don't need much. Only the sting, only a few lines of red.

Usually it's red anyway.

Sometimes you run out of blood and all that's left are the maggots.

Maggots, maggots, maggots, wet and wriggling beneath your skin, demanding that you widen the wound so you can watch them fall out in waves of that sickly yellowed white.

But they're happy once they're released, they turn into flies and flutter away to new destinations, dumpsters and animal shit and old food left to rot.

You wish you could follow them.

You wish for a lot of things.

At least you don't bleed caterpillars though.

You're always worried if you don't get the maggots out in time, they'll just go ahead and morph into flies, filling up your veins.

That sounds like the kind of pain you don't need, the kind that's a little too much to pick you up in the morning.

But it's good it's not caterpillars.

Caterpillars turn into butterflies after all, and butterflies are bigger, bigger, bigger.