Untitled Story

She stood and fled from the table. The whole restaurant looked at her as she scampered between the legs, and faces, and expressions, and words... run into the ladies toilet. Shut door. Collapsed back against the wall, feet sliding across the floor, body slipping... jammed up by the basin. Gasping. Air didn’t seem to be coming. Neither did the tears. Her cheeks burned and her eyes ached, as if longing to wash this away in a drowning flood. She just kept gasping, shoving air back and forth into her chest. Time passed without meaning or reference. She reached into the thin pocket of her skirt, and pulled out a knife. Unfolding the blade... she trembled slightly, holding it close. Yanked up her sleeve and pushed the tip into the white skin... which pitted into darkness... she dragged it across, pushing as hard as she could... dragged it round to the curve of the arms on the other side and pulled it up, gasping. The blood welled up. She looked down at the edges of torn flesh, and the red spilling over onto the white and rolling down. She slashed two more, and leant over the sink as blood dripped away. The taps washed the sink clean again, but there was blood on the floor. She didn’t even look at it. Staggered upright, straightened her hair and pushed open the door. She walked slowly out into the restaurant again. Some looked up, other pretended not to be curious. She tugged at the end of her sleeve, where it rested on her wrist. She felt something sticky holding the fabric to her skin. Just about to walk out through the doors into the darkness, when:1

“ehem, excuse me madam, but your bill...?”2

She stopped dead. Stared round, uncomprehending, at her empty table with its untouched food. He hadn’t paid. He hadn’t even paid. He’d said he would. She dropped a £50 note onto the counter and walked away. The waiter watched her back as she left, her change in his hand. 3

Maria walked around and around through the house, a strange buzzing filling her ears and her head. She couldn’t seem to focus to look at anything. Her head couldn’t decipher any purpose to her wandering, nor find something that had to be done. Whenever she tried to concentrate, his name seemed to be the only thought that could stick in her head. That, and images of the evening. Eventually she sat down in the big wooden chair, with a razorblade in her hand. She pulled it up and stabbed down at her arm, again, again. Sometimes she saw her flesh and sometimes she saw his. She slid downwards and lay on the floor, her hand bloodied from clasping the opposite arm, the blade cast away. She curled up on the boards and the tears came, flood, flood, to match the shame, sorrow and hatred on her arms, bleeding it’s own tears onto the floor, and her face, and her hands, and her neck, and her belly...4

Two weeks later, and she stood still in the middle of the same room, gritting her teeth and looking down at where she had pulled back her sleeve once more. Since that day, she had slashed at herself a number of times... but not for about a week. They were starting to turn to scars, and she traced the roughness on her skin. Then drew away with disgust, looking at the purple skin near the elbow, the small amount of pus oozing from an open gash. She had tried disinfecting it, the pain had been unbearable for hours, and the infection hadn’t gone. She went outside and stood on the corner. Two hours later a bus arrived and picked her up. The bus driver didn’t wonder how long she’d been there, didn’t even notice her shivering, the blue skin of her fingers. She soon warmed up, alone on the spacious back seat, tucked into a corner and lost within a world where the only existence was the engine noise. She got off by the hospital, and hesitated, looking up past the greenery to the white walls. She was afraid, sick in her stomach at what would, could, happen in there. Knew she had no choice, and walked onwards, despite everything her mind was yelling...5

She waited for a few hours with everyone else. The nurse on reception couldn’t see anything wrong with her, but this was a fact, not a thought, and did not register on the nurse’s consciousness. After asking if the problem was urgent, she waved Maria towards a seat and turned to the next person.6

The doctor asked what was wrong. She told him. The doctor asked her show him. She reached down, and pulled up her sleeve. Nothing that was in her mind showed on her face. The doctor’s eyes looked down at the purpling infection. His brain began to process the facts and decide on treatment, but then his eyes dragged to the red and white lines and marks across the flesh... right up the arm... Maria saw his expression change, something in his eyes, but he said nothing.7