Page 2 of Tortured Whispers
I looked at my nightstand searching for something to save my life. If I didn’t find something I would be swallowed whole. I could feel the panic setting in. Dread filled my body like immovable boulders.
A glint of light caught my eye. It was the smallest reflection and I’m not entirely sure where it came from but I grabbed it. My precision point tweezers.
My heart thumped slowly even though I was buzzing with anxiety. It had to have been the effects of me drowning. I had to save my life.
With shaky hands, I dragged the tip of the sharp tweezers against my wrist over and over until a trickle of red slid down my skin. A sharp gasp sliced through the quiet four walls of my room. I found myself looking for the culprit but it was me. I gasped.
I could breathe again.
The sting from the cut on my wrist drew my attention away from the feeling of drowning. Now, all I could focus on was the deep, warm burn pushing beneath my skin and into my tendons. I wanted more.
I needed to be able to feel.
I sliced across my wrist again and took another deep, calming breath. The water was gone. It wasn’t swallowing me whole anymore.
It didn’t matter that the only thing I could feel was pain. I felt something.
Once I could breathe, I dropped the tweezers and watched crimson trickle down into the lines of my palm. Pretty red raindrops racing to my fingertips. I must have cut pretty deep because the pain started to pulse along with my heartbeat.
It was still better than drowning.
“Brooklyn, your uncle is on the ph—” My father’s words were cut short once he saw my bloody wrist. “Oh my god, what have you done? Sweetheart…no.” Tears danced in his dark brown eyes as he sank to the floor beside my bed. I didn’t know how to explain to him that I hadn’t tried to kill myself, though I flirted with the idea. I just needed relief.
The relief that cutting gave me.
The relief that made it easier to drown because at least I could pull myself out of it.
The relief that kept me alive.
**
Brooklyn…
Four years later
Walking through the doors of Avery Briggs Alternative High School as a senior was totally different than walking through the doors as a freshman. As a senior, I was ready to get the hell out of there for good. It seemed like I was more aware of each second ticking by but only because I wanted them to tick by faster.
The sooner I left school, the sooner I could take a moment to catch my breath. I could take my college classes online and find a job that required minimal talking and human interaction. I was already on the hunt for work from home jobs.
I’d taken a few short-lived jobs working in customer service where all I had to do was chat with people and help fix their account problems but the jobs ended when they found out I was only seventeen. Well, I was eighteen now I planned to grab all the jobs I could.
After that awful experience with Ashley Hartwell in ninth grade, my dad decided to move me to an alternative school. He didn’t fuck around. I loved that about him but during that time it meant the most. He didn’t tell me to toughen up. He didn’t excuse it away and tell me that some kids were just mean.
He handled it.
I didn’t speak much around people after that though. Even though my speech apraxia wasn’t severe, I still tripped over my words and couldn’t pronounce things the right way. The anxiety and depression were heavy enough to stop me from talking. It
also meant I didn’t make friends but I was okay with that.
Well, I did befriend a boy here and there. Long enough for them to get what they wanted and for me to realize sex wasn’t at all what everyone made it out to be. In the end, I still found myself searching for friendship. After a while, I knew it was all a fairytale. Girls like me didn’t have friends.
The last time I wanted to be friends with someone, I got humiliated. It was an incident that was four years old but I still replayed the moment where I wanted to be friends with Ashley and kicked myself every time.
Sometimes, I cut my arms while I thought about it. Cutting still helped me breathe through the water in my head. I didn’t cut nearly as much as I used to though. I used to do it seven or more times a day but now I only cut once or twice a day.
I slid my books in my locker and caught a glimpse of one of the many silvery lines peeking from under my long sleeved shirt. I tugged the cotton down over the heel of my hand, popped my thumb through the hole in my sleeve, and slammed the locker closed before heading to homeroom.
If I couldn’t find sleeves that came with thumb-holes then I usually cut them into my shirts so I could shield my scars from view. I hated the looks I got from people. Nobody ever said a word but their eyes always said enough.
