"Cut My Life into Pieces"
as inspired by "Last Resort" by Papa Roach
For some reason, suicide seems to come to mind a lot when I think of Jackson and Holt. This story includes self-loathing, self-harm, blood, suicide, death, depression... a whole gambit of bad stuff. So, if you dislike that sort of thing, you'd probably be better off moving on.
Cut my life into pieces / I've reached my last resort / Suffocation / No breathing
Don't give a #$% if I cut my arm bleeding / Do you even care if I die bleeding?
Would it be wrong / Would it be right / If I took my life tonight? / Chances are that I might
Mutilation out of sight / And I'm contemplating suicide
...
Jackson slid the broken razor blade across his wrist, watching with interest as a deep wound appeared and blood began to seep out.
He relaxed for a moment, watching as his own blood came out. It hurt. It hurt so badly… But nothing else in his life felt near as good as this felt.
His life stank, plain and simple. And, actually, the entire flipping world stank. Nothing was right, and nothing worked out. Some days, it seemed as though nothing was worth living for.
And this was one of those days. He would need to cut himself a lot in order to make himself feel better.
Jackson Jekyll sat alone in his bedroom. His door was locked. The curtains were closed. And his monstrous father was out of the house.
He moved to stand before the full length mirror that hung on the inside of his closet door, admiring his work. Large gashes and small cuts both littered his arms and even his chest, blood trickling out of a few of them.
Now his body matched the way he felt, for he was scarred, inside and out.
And it made him smile.
When most people were feeling low, they would divulge themselves in their favorite things, things that made them feel happy. Ice cream, fashion dolls, comics. Silly things, serious things, and even ridiculous things. But not Jackson.
When Jackson was feeling low, and he often felt that way, he cut himself.
He had been told all of his life that self-harm was wrong, that it was a sin. But he reasoned that by sinning he was no worse than anyone else and that it didn't really matter. And the people that told him it was wrong hadn't helped him. His family, his teachers, his therapist… None had helped.
Was it wrong? Perhaps. How could doing harm to your own body not be wrong? But it was the only thing that made him feel better.
So he didn't stop.
His fingers reached out, grasping the handle of a long kitchen knife.
Jackson looked himself over in the mirror once more, frowning. He had no love for his body, himself, or anyone else. How could he when no one had any love for him?
Removing his pants and revealing more scars to the light, he drew the knife slowly and purposefully across his calf, reveling in the deep pain that set in and watching as his blood flowed down, going past his ankle and pooling in the carpet below his foot.
He leaned back with a sigh as temporary relief set in.
It didn't matter how he cut himself, so long as he did. Shards of glass, fragments of metal, razors, kitchen utensils, pocket knives… Even his own fingernail would suffice. He just had to angle it right and push really hard. Blood would cover his hand when he did that, but he didn't mind.
His classmates would wonder why he wore long-sleeved shirts and full pants all the time, even in the summer. They would tease him about it, sometimes bully him.
And of course, those that paid close enough attention and discovered his secret would treat him even worse.
They would bully him. Pity him. Despise him. Be disgusted by him. Patronize him.
This only served to make him hide himself even more from their prying eyes.
He hated their patronizing faces. Hated the way they would judge him because of the scars that poked out along his wrist, the way he would snap rubber bands over his wrist harshly during class.
Like they were better than him. Like he was a worse sinner than they were.
So he kept to himself, and he kept quiet. Spoke politely with his classmates and allowed himself to become their 'sometimes friend,' someone who they called a friend but didn't always treat like one.
It wasn't the most pleasant of lives, but it could have been worse, he supposed.
Even when it didn't feel like it could get any worse.
And why wouldn't anyone simply love and accept him the way he was? The last person to do that was his mother, and she was dead.
His father was horrible. Dr. Jekyll had never gotten over his wife's death, and he'd taken to beating Jackson. Actually, he'd beaten Jackson even when his wife was alive, so he didn't have that pathetic excuse to hide behind.
"Father is only half a man," Jackson muttered to himself, slicing across the front of his ankle and letting the blood spill out to cover his foot. He smiled to himself, becoming immersed in the streams of glistening red liquid that poured from his body. "He's half monster, too... We are alike, in this respect, I suppose..."
Blood. It was a fascinating thing, really. So vital to the human body… and yet so pleasing to watch leave the human body.
How long had he been at this? How much more could he lose before dieing?
Jackson didn't care, having made his switch from self harming to suicidal long ago. He had planned this. Couldn't wait for it.
Had his life always been this bad? It certainly felt like it.
Was his life really so bad, or did he just view it to be?
He didn't bother to think too hard about that. It was irrelevant. It didn't matter.
Where was the line between self harming and suicidal? Was that question really important?
Rolling his eyes, Jackson reached for another knife.
Now he held a knife in each hand, one stained with blood and one clean for the moment.
His mind traveled quickly, thinking of the last few years of his life. Slicing into his skin and watching himself bleed, taking his beatings from his father, visiting his mother's grave and having no words to say.
He had picked up a Bible once, when a classmate who seemed to patronize him less than the others told him that it might help.
He read that book cover to cover, but it didn't help him any. The words don't always make sense when you don't have someone to guide you through everything involved.
Dr. Jekyll was smart, so Jackson had brought the book to his father, hoping to have a few questions answered.
He'd forgotten how much his father had cursed the name of God when his mother died.
Jackson was beaten double that night, and the book had been torn to pieces and thrown into the fire.
The subject was never brought up again.
'Self harm is a sin,' they'd always told him. The same with suicide.
But if it was the only way to achieve peace of mind, Jackson was willing to try it.
His therapist had said that he had some kind of mental illness, but that's not what it felt like. To Jackson, it felt normal to spend hours a week, playing with sharp objects and seeing how deeply he could wound himself.
It felt normal to cover everything he owned with his own blood.
What felt strange was behaving the same way all of the people around him behaved. Smiling was strange, being happy was strange.
But watching while his vital fluids seeped out from his veins and arteries felt normal.
Jackson cut himself again, biting down on a smaller knife to keep from crying out.
The taste of blood filled his mouth, but he didn't care. It didn't matter.
He was bathing himself in his own blood, so drinking it somehow didn't seem too peculiar.
His lips had broken, and he'd cut his tongue. He wouldn't have even noticed if he hadn't swallowed a mouthful of the red liquid.
It tasted terrible, but he didn't pay it any attention. He didn't even bother spitting it out.
Twisting his finger against his blood soaked knee, he then lifted the digit to the wall and began to write with it. He wrote all over the walls, covering their white surfaces with as many words as he could think of.
Hate… I hate my life… Everyone hates me… I'm sorry… I won't be a burden anymore… Death… Blood… You won't even notice I'm gone… No one will miss me…
And so on and so on he wrote, leaving his death letter scrawled all across what used to be his bedroom.
"I can't go on like this," he finished, unable to explain his feelings any further.
Many things passed through his mind. Would anyone at all even notice his absence? Would anyone care? Would anyone miss him?
He shook his head, clearing his mind of those thoughts. They weren't necessary. They changed nothing.
Death was coming for him, and he was almost impatient for its arrival.
He took one last look in the mirror, appraising his face and body. This was how he was going to look when he died. This was how he was going to look at his funeral.
This was how he was going to look when they put him in the ground.
Smiling, he continued to make cuts over his body.
Deep gashes appeared on each wrist and ankle, the blood gushing out from the arteries like small waterfalls. The carpet beneath him was stained red and he knew it would never come clean again. No part of his room would ever come clean. Just like his body and his soul.
The thought made him laugh.
Jackson became aware of the sounds of his good-for-nothing father coming home downstairs. He ignored the noises, knowing full well that his father wouldn't even so much as look in the general direction of his room until Jackson had bled so much that his blood had saturated his bedroom floor, dripping through to the ceiling beneath.
He amused himself momentarily with the mental image of his blood splashing onto his father's head below. Maybe then Dr. Jekyll would take more notice of his son.
"I hope he drowns in my blood," Jackson muttered, chuckling in an insane fashion. The very idea just struck him as funny. He didn't know why, but it did.
He wondered when it was exactly that he'd lost his mind. Or maybe it had only just happened now. Perhaps it was an effect from losing so much blood already. He didn't know.
"Goodbye, world," he whispered.
He raised one of his blood soaked knives to his throat, dug the blade into the skin, and pulled.
His body was found many hours later when his father broke through his locked door. Dr. Jekyll had hollered at his son and, when he received no answer, assumed that the boy was being a smart alec and wanted a beating.
It took him awhile to even recognize the boy, his features were so obscured by cuts and marks and scars and blood.
Jackson's glasses lay on the blood stained floor nearby, broken and shattered, droplets of blood clinging to what was left of the frames and the glass.
The entire school and neighborhood all turned out for the funeral. Everyone who attended each asked the same question.
"Was it my fault? Am I the cause? Why didn't I do better? How could I have treated him like that? Was it all my fault?!"
Even Dr. Jekyll felt terrible, and he left the funeral halfway through to drown his sorrows in a bottle. When that didn't work, he stopped off at a hardware store and bought a length of rope.
Dr. Jekyll's body was found shortly thereafter, his neck stretched out and twisted oddly. He was hanging from his rope off of a tree in his backyard.
He had a sign, written in his own blood on a piece of cardboard, hanging from around his neck.
It read, "I'm sorry."
Both Jackson and his father were buried near Mrs. Jekyll and given decent headstones. Both read, just as Mrs. Jekyll's, "Died Before Their Time."
Flowers, cards, and decorations of all varieties were piled onto the family's graves as people attempted to make them look festive and happy, as though they were trying to make everyone, even those in the graves, forget about their unhappy ends.
And everyone wondered if they could have done something to prevent such horrible deaths.
Could they have said something? Could they have been less patronizing?
For many years, even after they removed the Jekyll's house and built a new one on the property, many people of the town felt guilt.
Many people moved away, saying that they felt as if they were haunted. They felt that they should have done something, but they didn't, and they would never stop regretting their shallow actions.
Perhaps they could have. Perhaps they should have. And perhaps they would have.
But no one would ever know.
...
The Unfortunate End.