The Addiction

Release. Adrenaline. Pleasure. Sweet, delirious, numbing... hers was a drug so physically intoxicating, it called to her in all her waking hours, in her dreams, in her nightmares. She had built up a small resistance to it. For months at a time, even, she could push down the rising need in her and quell the screaming that reverberated in every fiber of her being. But, inevitably, she'd find herself weakened from the stresses that piled upon her, and the whispering of desire would fill the void in her soul with sweet nothings and empty promises.

Thoughtlessly, she would crawl into her bed and reach under her pillow to draw out that which haunted her so, close at hand as it ever was. She stared down at it blankly as she opened it, its viperous fangs revealed. Before she realized, it bit, poison flowing into her as crimson as the ichor that trickled down the length of her arm. Over and over, it tore at her flesh, her motions practiced, mechanical. She was past feeling, past caring, and certainly past knowing the damage she would have to contend with later. Eyes rolled back in her head, sighs of ecstasy passed through her lips. She was lost in a world that far too many knew, finding the only sublime release she could understand.

When she finally dropped the bloody knife to the ground, her arm throbbed with a painful reality. She observed the violence she had inflicted upon herself, and with disturbing satisfaction, her eyes lingered on the trails of red crisscrossing her skin. Reaching under her pillow again, she grabbed a towel, long ago stained by her addiction. She pressed it to her wounds, now all-too conscious of the mess she had made. She collapsed, suddenly exhausted. Caressing her arm with a zealous gentleness, still in its towel, she began to cry for the first time in months. All of her pain poured out into her pillow, soaking up the tears and emotions dammed up inside her for too long.

Soon after, she fell into a dreamless sleep, one night's reprieve from crimson-tinged nightmares that filled her days. The next morning she would awaken numbed and calmly clean her wounds from the night before. The smell of blood mixed with hydrogen peroxide never failed to sicken her, but it was a stench she learned to ignore. After a shower, she carefully chose clothing to conceal the fresh scars. And onward went her routine, for hours, days, and months at a time in seeming peacefulness. Yet, she was always at the beck and call of the ache within her, the voices in the dark that never let her rest. And she was the only one who ever knew that she wore her scars on her sleeve.