THE SONG OF DESPAIR

Birthday!

"You have done nothing for me except be a burden! " Mother yelled. Jace could feel the coldness in his mother's spiteful words. He wasn't angry at her nevertheless.

"We do all these things for you. Spend a lot of money in excess, that your dad somehow finds from God knows where! For you! But all you do is give your father and I a lot of pain and sorrow!"

"I know, " Jace whispered to himself but his mother took it as him back answering her. She began yelling louder, breaking down with huge cries.

Jace was feeling guilty all the more. He felt like the worst son ever, making his mother cry on her birthday. He ran upstairs into his room. He took out the belt off his pants and started hitting his knuckles hard with its heavy buckle. It hurt really bad. He saw his knuckles turning red. 

"They are sure to turn into contusions and make me hurt for a while," he thought. But he couldn't hurt himself enough. Few contusions weren't enough to punish himself for hurting his mother and father. For squandering all their hard earned money. For making his father travel back to the dance studio to bring his bag because he assumed that his father would have kept it in the dash of the vehicle after dance practice. He was disappointed in himself. He was stuck in a mania of wanting to hurt himself more and more.

Jace had always thought about deleting his existence for a few years now, thus doing a favor for his parents and earth. To not be a burden and just end his life. But ending a life isn't as easy as deleting a character on the computer. It gets really messy. Especially when you're deliberately doing so. Every time he wanted to die and took a pen knife or scissor or a bunch of pills in his hand with so much desperation, he would think about a lot of other things, making him keep the backspace that he wanted to use back in its place. He would remember his father telling him how privileged he was to get everything in a silver platter and thinking of  suicide was an act of ungratefulness and attention-seeking. He'd also think about the expenses that his parents would have to endure for his funeral. Above all, the shame greater than any shame that he'd cause them. Because he knew even if he wrote a letter asking his parents to bury him without a service and even bury him without a casket, they'd never do that. He wanted to not be even more of a burden than he already was. He didn't want to leave a mark or trace in this world. But suicide, he thought wasn't going to help him with that.

He was suddenly pulled out of his trance by a voice below which he could never mistake for anybody else's voice. The voice he dreaded the most. Down stairs was his cousin. She was at least six feet tall, huge and handsome with a lot of hormones surging up inside her. He heard his mother being comforted by her, something Jace, being her son couldn't do.

"I can't bear to see you cry auntie. I'll go up to his room and talk to him. But now cheer up for I have brought presents for you, " she was saying. She was overjoyed to have a niece as sweet and as beautiful as her. Soon enough he could hear sounds of exclamation and joy, lifting the air of sadness from the floor below.

Jace was alerted as the voice approached him. He sucked up all the air he could. Sweat dripped down his throat. The voice opened the door without knocking and called out his name. The way he despised his name when she used it!

"I've heard that someone has become a nuisance to his mother, " she taunted.

"You did it again Jace didn't you? "she said as he approached him swiftly and pulled at his sleeves to make him sit on the bed with her. Jace complied without protest, his head bowed in shame.