Free Cut by Layla Harding

for the one on my left hip. It was so thick I could feel it through my dress. It wrapped all the way around from my butt to inner thigh. If it wasn’t so morbid, I would have almost been impressed by that one. It took real dedication to cut like that.
    There had been no mapping, no rituals, no anything that night. In a moment of desperation, pain beyond any human threshold rolling through my body, I had snatched a razor and simply sliced. There was so much disgust and shame welling up inside I didn’t think I would ever be able to bleed it all out. I didn’t even register the pain for a good sixty seconds.
    When my leg started throbbing, and I saw how much blood was pouring out I knew I should be panicked. This could finally be it. For all the attacks on my wrists, it could be this cut—not even across a major artery—that would end it. How ironic. The temporary fix could have become the permanent cure.
    In the end, my body betrayed me. I did nothing to stop the blood. I lay down on my bed and let it bleed. It clotted on its own, after soaking my sheets. I threw them away on the way to school the next morning. There was nothing I could do about the stain on my mattress. Good thing about being a girl—built-in excuse for bloodstains.
    And then there were the fresh cuts across my stomach. When I touched them through my dress, the fabric scratched painfully against them. They were shallow enough I wasn’t really worried about them opening back up, but deep enough they would probably always be with me.
    Some of the scars had faded over the years. Some seemed like they would never heal. Some I could tie to a specific event or time. Some were there to remind me of who and what I was. There were days I didn’t know if I could define myself without those marks on my body. They were mine and only mine. If I didn’t add to the collection, would I stop being me? Was there a chance I could be someone else? Someone better?
    Suddenly, I was exhausted. I didn’t want to think or feel anymore. I wanted to sleep. I curled up in what I now considered my recliner (even though Ken still sat there when we read) and pulled the old fleece blanket over me, all the way up to my nose. I went to sleep thinking of vanilla and sandalwood, cold steel and hurt.

11.
    “Persephone. Wake up, Persephone.” When I felt a hand on my shoulder gently shaking me awake my first instinct was to curl into a ball. Or punch. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping if I pretended to be asleep he would go away. It very rarely worked.
    “Persephone, it’s time to get up.” Then I remembered I wasn’t at home, and it wasn’t my father trying to rouse me. It was safe to wake up. I rolled my head around to look at Ken standing over me. I had no idea what time it was. Should I be at home? Was I late? I was supposedly grounded.
    “Oh shit! What time is it?” I struggled to get out of the chair.
    “Calm down. It’s barely after two.”
    “Oh good. Um, I kind of got grounded yesterday. I’m supposed to go straight home after school.”
    “Grounded? For what?” Because of you. Because my mom lets my dad play her like a chess game. Because I refuse to tell the truth to anyone but you. Because my family is completely screwed up. Any of those answers would be truthful but none really acceptable.
    “Mom thinks I’ve been sneaking around. She told me I couldn’t do anything after school or on the weekends for a few weeks. Don’t worry. She’ll forget about it in a couple of days.”
    Ken sighed and sat in the rocking chair. “Perhaps it’s time we talked. I think there are some things we both need to know about each other.”
    If he had caught me at any other time, if I hadn’t just woken up, if I hadn’t been emotionally exhausted from the night before, maybe I could have come up with something better. Maybe I could have kept the wall up with a perfect lie. Or maybe not.
    “Mom drinks a lot. She is usually in bed by nine. And Dad travels for his job. Nobody