Slice
He wasn't a cutter. He'd never be a cutter. Cutters were dirty; they were twisted people who took the knife and pressed it to their flesh, watched the blood well and drew some sort of satisfaction from the act. Cutters were screaming for attention and hoping that the jolt of pain would shock them away from the need, from the addiction of worried eyes and worried hands on them, pressing closer, whispering softly, offering help and therapy and just the right kind of pain to make the pills go away.
No, he wasn't a cutter. This wasn't about attention, at least not the garnering of it. He had attention, in spades, had too much attention, and not enough places to go where he could turn his head, duck behind his hair, and not feel their eyes on his skin, as sharp and demanding as the fingers that would surely follow.
The act itself was something every man did, or rather every man needed to do, to keep from looking like a scrubby-cheeked woodsman in a society that favored clean-faced and boyish optimism. It was hardly his fault that all he had to shave with was a long straight razor that he'd stolen from someone's home, a broken bowl full of river water and some gel palmed from the trial-size section of the grocery store, a shattered mirror propped up against the dim wall of the warehouse.
Neither was it is fault that, when he guided the fatefully sharp metal over that tricky hook of his adam's apple, sometimes he paused, pressed until a thin line of red blossomed against the steel. It was not his fault that high along his jaw, in the crease where no one would see, there was a long white scar where he'd traced with the tip of the razor, watching as his throat sheened crimson. Who could blame him, when 'home' was an empty warehouse that had been slated for demolition ten years ago, 'bed' was a pile of dirty rags until the only ledge in the place that didn't leak, and 'dinner' was only a fantasy that abused his nose and stomach. It wasn't, after all, as if he was a cutter. He was only an escapist.
