I let out a deep breath and clicked up the blade. Looking down at the sharp edge, I bit my lip.
I knew it was fucked up to want to cut myself. I knew I shouldn’t do it and that it was deranged that I felt the desire to do so at all… but there was no escape from the hell that was my life. I couldn’t even kill myself. I had no one, and the second I found atinypiece of happiness, it always seemed to be torn away. I neededsomekind of release and hurting myself had always given that to me. It was as close as I could get to ending it all. The urge just built and built inside me until I felt like I might literally explode with the need to watch my pain spill out of me in thick, crimson streams.
‘Meow!’I turned to find Chaos standing in the doorway to my room. His eyes reflected in the shadows of my bedroom, and his silhouette was backlit by the light I had left on in the hall.
“Go away, Chaos. I’ll be out to snuggle you in a bit.” I shooed him off and climbed up into my bed. I rested my back against the wall and tugged up my skirt, exposing my scars. Chaos hissed in disapproval but did as I said and left.
Running my fingers over the raised flesh, I felt for a clear patch of skin. There was a space on my inner thigh with Sam’s name all over it.
Stroking the unmarked piece of skin gently, I apologized to myself for being so weak before I pressed the tip of the blade against my soft thigh. I took a deep breath and braced for the inevitable sting that came with the parting of flesh.
Suddenly, I heard a deep, long, scraping sound coming from my living room. Every hair on my body stood at attention. The temperature dropped several degrees, and I could see my breath hanging in the air before me.
A floorboard creaked just outside my room, and I began to shiver in fear. I was frozen, with the blade still pressed against the inside of my thigh.
“Hello?” I asked quietly, my voice quivering. The scraping sound was getting closer, and with each passing second, I was flooded with more terror.
“Who’s there?” I whispered, though I knew who it was before he made it to the door. The first thing that came into view was the tip of his scythe. He moved slowly into the frame, his tall, dark form blocking out the light of the hall. The handle of his scythe dragged across the wooden floor as he moved, producing that horrible scraping sound.
My breath caught in my chest as he turned to face me. I stared into the pit of darkness that was his hood and found myself wanting to scream but unable to.
Slowly, he held out one long, black finger and pointed to the box cutter I was still holding between my thighs. I glanced down at the knife and then back up at him, swallowing nervously.
Leisurely, the demon wagged his finger, back and forth, back and forth.
I was shocked. Now I couldn’t evencutmyself?
“What are you going to do about it?” I hissed. “You’ve already taken everything. Did you kill Sam, too?”
The demon just stared at me and drummed his inky fingers on the handle of his scythe. I understood the threat for what it was. Yes, he had killed Sam, and he would kill more if I didn’t obey. I thought of how Shem had thrown his arm over my shoulders today, and my heart skipped a beat.
What if he killed Shem? Or Raf?
Rage suddenly coursed through me, burning away my fear in a fiery fit of anger.
“You don’t want me to cut myself? Fine. Maybe I’ll cut you instead!” I snarled, whipping the box cutter at the demon in my doorway.
To my horror, the knife froze in mid-air, never hitting its target. The demon flicked his fingers, and the knife turned slowly in the air to aim at me again.
I narrowed my eyes. “What, you’re going to killme?”I laughed. “Finally!Do it!” I goaded the monster. I could almost feel his anger leak through the room. He didn’t like me speaking to him like that.
The knife darted forward, but instead of impaling me like I had hoped, it buried itself in the wall above my head.
Right where I had pinned up a picture of Chaos.
My heart sank.
He knew. He knew how much Chaos meant to me. He had probably been waiting and allowing me to have this one small piece of joy just so he could hold it over my head when it suited him most.
Tears welled in my eyes, and I whipped around to tell him that he won. I would do whatever he wanted as long as he didn’t kill my cat.
However, he was already gone. The only evidence he had ever been there at all was the box cutter buried into the glossy photo of my little black cat.
“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
— MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
Just like I knew it would be, Sam’s face was all over the news the next day.
