Page 264 of If You Give an Artist a Killer Muse

“Briar,” I ask, pulling away so she can sit up again. “What happened?”

But she looks away from me.

She looks away as if I didn’t see tears streaming down her face. I gently cup her chin, turning her head to me. She closes her eyes, her lips trembling.

“Can we just go back to earlier, please?” Briar whispers so brokenly. The sound gives me this sharp feeling, like someone poking me with a dull blade. “Please, Rurik?”

“No,” My voice came out more harshly than I intended. But I can’t do this again. We are not fucking going on this stupid roller coaster again. “Your back, Briar. What the fuck happened?” She tries to dig her hands under the blankets, but I snatch her wrist and flip it, seeing the scars that look eerily familiar, like the ones on her back and shoulders.

Panic grips me suddenly as I stare at the old scars, my mind darting all over the place as I put two and two together.

“Briar,” I start. “What was it this time? You drop your kitchen knife, and it somehow landed on your back? How?” My voice increases with each question. I’m so tired of the lies I know she’s about to feed me. I can’t help her if she doesn’t want my help.

She whimpers, and I stop, letting her continue crying and her body shaking against mine. She keeps shaking her head, muttering something like “I’m sorry” and “my fault,” things that don’t fucking make sense to me.

“Please tell me what’s wrong, baby,” I tell her, pulling her head against my chest.

She shudders but continues crying. Her cries are now silent as she grips her hand on the blankets.

“Your wrist?” I start slowly. “Those weren’t simply from kitchen accidents, were they?”

She hesitates for a second before nodding once. I close my eyes.

“Why your shoulders and the scars on your back?”

Briar swallows hard and sighs softly, “Because. It keeps the darkness away.”

I pause, my thumb caressing her wrist. “Darkness?”

“Sometimes, my mind becomes too much to bear. It's like this overwhelming weight pressing down on me, suffocating me,” She pulls away and wraps her arms around her, tucking herself like a little ball. “Sometimes, I would hear these voices in my head. My voice. It reminds me of shit that’s my fault. Then the darkness creeps in, filling every corner of my mind until there's nothing else left except for the dark and that voice.”

Is this why she sometimes blanked out on me?

“Baby,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around her. “I had no idea…”

She continues as if she’s been holding a secret and finally finding release in sharing it with someone. “The pain from cutting and the blood that comes out of it... They help suck in the darkness and silence the voices, Rurik. Every time I see the blood pouring out of me, everything else just goes with it.”

“Briar,” I say after letting her words wash over me in frightening waves. “What can I do to make you stop this? Please tell me.”

But she shakes her head, “Nothing. I haven’t been indulging in it for a while. I mostly did it when I was living with my uncle, to be honest.”

“When he hits you.”

“Yeah. He usually does it with his belt, though. That’s his favorite, especially the belt buckle part. Whenever he did that, I would cut along the whip marks.”

“Jesus fuck Briar.”

She grimaces, “I’m sorry, too much info, I know. But I stopped whenever we’re together.”

“Don’t apologize for something you’ve experienced. I want you to tell me regardless of how awful it is,” I tell her. “Did you cut again when we’re not together?”

She’s quiet, and I don’t fucking like it.

“Why do you add more scars to your back?” I ask, needing to know.

“I told you how I got those scars because someone set our building on fire, right?” She asks.

I nod.

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