Inflictions Chapter One

She trembled, her hand on the doorknob. A screaming came from outside the door, but she wasn’t sure how much she actually had to go to the bathroom.
It was the normal screaming between her parents. Father was on drugs again, and had pawned mother’s priceless china. Who cares about china? The important thing was that, at any moment during the day, her father could be lying on the ground, dead from a heart attack. It wasn’t exactly healthy for a 40-year-old man to be doing cocaine. But she was used to it. And she was even more used to what came next.
“Casey! Casey! Make them stop!” came a small voice from outside the door. It was followed by a weak sob, and a sniffle. Casey’s hand stopped trembling and immediately turned the doorknob.
Outside her room, crouched on the ground, was her younger brother, Dylan. He glanced up, face streaked with tears. He instantly jumped up and clung to his older sister’s leg.
“They’re fighting again, Casey! Make them stop!”
“I can’t make them stop, Dylan.” She replied weakly. She took a step back, and her brother came with her. Casey crouched down to meet Dylan’s level and hugged him with one arm, closing the door before fully embracing him. 1

Eventually, Dylan fell asleep. Casey watched him for a while, after closing the vents on the ceiling so that less sound leaked through. But she could still hear the screaming.
It was strange that father hadn’t left by now. Usually, there was only an hour of arguing, but tonight it seemed to stretch along for hours. She stared at a spot on her wall, lost in the infinite whiteness for a while. When she next looked at the clock, it was 2 a.m., and all had gone quiet.
It wasn’t until that moment that her eyelids grew heavy. She lay next to her brother on the bed, tugging her oversized sweatshirt down past her thighs. Within minutes of closing her eyes, the silence penetrated her mind.
The eerie ringing in her ears made cold sweat run down the back of her neck. It was so weird to go to sleep in this silence. Casey sat up, rubbing her forehead. The next day was a school day. She had to sleep.
She lay back down, frustrated with herself. After another few minutes, she stood and turned her music on low.
The calming bass line and steady beat of the drums took her elsewhere. She was no longer in her dark room, her brother laying on the bed, in a dark, unwelcoming house that seemed to emanate “freaks.” No, they weren’t freaks. But they were weird. Abnormal. Different. All of this floated behind her as she got wrapped up in the lyrics.
“…Take my face and bash it into a mirror. I won’t have to see the pain, bleed bleed.” Screamed the front man. Casey was dead to the world.
She lifted the right sleeve of her sweatshirt slowly, with the rhythm of the music, her eyes closed. Even in the faint moonlight, every whitish scar was visible. There were newer ones that had scabbed over, older, faded ones that you could barely make out, all in different shapes like hearts or words like die, and ugly.
Casey unhooked a safety pin from her other sleeve and pressed it against the pale flesh of the inside of her wrist. She dragged it across the skin, putting more pressure on it the further she went.
The one saying that had always stuck with her when she read it was the same rule she followed every time. “Down the road, not across the street.”
She made a vertical cut down the whole inside of her arm, from the bottom of the palm to the inside of the elbow. She felt her scalp tingle, and it traveled down the back of her neck. Blood bubbled from the wound; Casey sharpened her safety pins every morning. She watched as scarlet ribbons formed on her arm, transfixed. After a moment, she wiped off the remaining blood, and did it again, this time a little to the left.
After six jagged lines were on her arm, Casey stopped. She breathed a sigh of relief and stood, flipping the music off. She crawled beneath the covers, yanking down her sleeve, and drifted off.2

She woke up alone. Dylan had already left for school, and the clock read 8:15. There was only 45 minutes until school. Casey groaned, stretching, and got up.
No one was home, as always. Her mother had gone to work; her father was God only knows where. She was finally alone.
Casey stepped into the bathroom and undressed for the shower. On her back were countless self-inflicted wounds. It looked like a sea of red scars. On her legs and arms was the same thing; the only thing untouched was her face.
She stepped into the bathtub, wincing as every cut from her ankle down seared. Casey slowly sank; more wounds becoming submersed in the water and burning from the outside in.
After a while, her body stopped burning as she became used to the water. The broken flesh relaxed, and she felt normal again. Casey didn’t speak. She let the silence penetrate her mind once again, and closed her eyes.
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