Chapter Four
Suffering. I awoke with the word reverberating in my head. It was an apt description of my pathetic existence. Who was I kidding? Hero of Time? More like maybe hero of thirty seconds on a good day. I was a failure. At everything. The fact that people thought otherwise was just proof of my learned skill. I had become quite adept at hiding my pain. And oh, what painful pain it was.
I stared at the dark sky, as if the stars themselves could shine down on me and provide me with an answer. They didn't, of course. The stars themselves stopped talking to me long ago, as they knew I was nothing more than a failure. I had never really had any friends, I realized. Zelda wasn't; Zelda was gone, if she wasn't dead somewhere (this was most likely) she was still in Starbucks as a cheerleader, and that was perhaps worse.
The woods seemed to grow deeper, darker, and colder. I shivered. What was the point in living? I had nothing for which I should live. Nothing was worth my time, and clearly, I was worth no one else's time. Everything in me hurt, like a very hurtful thing, dark and cold and oppressive.
I was still lying on my back staring at the mute stars; I sat up now and surveyed the deep, dark woods into which I had wandered. I had the iPod that had been so graciously bestowed upon me by Mary Sue. I turned in on and slowly looked through the list of melodic tunes, longing for one that could ease the pain that was gnawing away, hamster-like, at my very soul. I stumbled across an Evanescence album, pressed play, and wept.
I stared at the blades of grass. They were so sharp, so green, so perfect. Like the razor blades that had stabbed into my soul and were now shredding it to bits... except those weren't green. Those were black, black as the darkest night, black as the starless sky (for the stars to which I had so beseechingly looked for an answer had vanished, the final participants in the parade of people who had turned their back on me), black as the hoodie I had bought at Hot Topic.
I determined that if I ever got out of this forest, I would gauge my ears. Really huge. Big enough to fit a small rodent through, at least.
A wave of depression overtook me upon the thought of this plan. I would never get out. Any attempt to do so would only leave me hopelessly lost. Why could I do nothing right? The thought made me even sadder. The depression was heavy, tangible. It hung in the air heavily, choking me, cutting off my circulation, poking at me occasionally and jumping back with a giggle when I lashed out at it. I hated it, and I hated myself. I hated myself for being depressed, for being weak. I grew depressed about this realization. Each bit of depression caused me to grow even more depressed about the very fact that I was depressed. There was no escape. Even if there had been, I had no motivation to try and find it.
My hair fell angstily over one eye.
I thought of Zelda. I wanted to think of the good times, of the happy memories, but there were none. The reality of the situation was that she likely had no idea I existed, and if she did know, she didn't care. If she didn't know, she didn't care either, and if she ever were to find out in the future, she would be so filled with hatred and loathing that she would yearn for the blissful days of ignorance. I loved her despite all this, of course, and I couldn't blame her for her hatred of me, because I was, after all, a failure.
The answer came unexpectedly.
I was thinking about death when it arrived. I wasn't thinking good thoughts about death, for I was incapable of thinking good thoughts about anything. I had been dwelling on the elusive memory of the parents I had never known. In my mind they had not died; in my mind, I had had a happy childhood with them, until they began beating me. They were not abusive; I deserved it. I continued along this twisted and dark path until I remembered that it had not really happened, that, like so many other aspects of my life, it was a lie, and they were dead.
Dead. The word was beautiful. Symmetrical. Four letters, beginning and ending with a D, and two vowels in the middle. I traced the letters in the dirt with my fingertip. I unsheathed my sword and traced them into my arm with the blade. This was difficult; it was heavy, it was awkward to hold at such an angle, and my arms were not long enough to allow me to carve the word into my skin without grasping the actual blade. And so I grasped the actual blade, and did so that way. I was in no position to be picky. The deep gashes left on the palm of my writing hand only soothed my pain more, as I watched the blood spill from my arm like cherry syrup on a Sno-Cone.
Come to think of it, I had always liked the look of strikethrough text.
This was not enough.
I took the blade and drew it along my wrist, slicing a neat line through the word "dead." Blood poured out. I laughed, for the first time in months. I played a little tic-tac-toe game on the back of my hand as my arm continued to bleed all over the forest floor. I was losing (for I can't even win a tic tac toe game against myself) when I began to grow dizzy, and everything went black.