"What the fuck is wrong with you?" I always loved whittling. "I give you inch after inch, mile after mile, and you still take it all out on me!" Maybe my dad taught it to me, or maybe I picked it up on my own. All I know for sure is my claws were made for it. "I do everything I can to help only for you to take it out on me! Do you think I'm the only one on our team that has problems with you?" It's a simple process. Take the wood, carve out everything that shouldn't be there until you find the perfect little whatever inside.
Charlie's fire barely had any wood left to burn. "You're not the only one who misses her! You're not the only one who loved her!" I grabbed another chunk of wood to carve into empty air. "But you take it out on all of us. You take your baggage—our baggage—and bludgeon everyone you can to death with it." A sliver of wood slipped between my claws and flesh, cut so deep that my blood coated my creation in moments.
"I'm done being your emotional punching bag." I gouged out any part of it my blood touched. I didn't belong on my creation. "I won't let you take it out on anyone else, either. Take some time for yourself. I don't care, but leave us all out of it." Red stained every inch of the wood. I kept carving. "Just, please, take care of yourself. I miss you." Charlie's claw covered mine.
"A lot of us do." No matter how much I carved, how much I cut, how much I scraped away, more blood took its place. Wood had no time to shine before my crimson sin blot it out of existence. I took more off, and more succumbed to the worthless crimson stain. It came, more, more, more than I could stop. I couldn't fix it. I couldn't save it. I ruined it.
At least, so I thought. Finally, all the mistakes fell away. I had nothing else to cut away. Finally, the wood left me. I had the flawless, perfect nothing I'd always wanted. I'd always needed.