Short Stories

How Could You? (Dodge boys)

*WARNING- TRIGGER*

I get home from visiting Blake's grave around noon. I stayed to talk for him for over an hour. I'd told him I turned thirty last week. I can barely see from the tears blurring my eyes. Four years and it hasn't gotten any easier. I push my sleeves up, studying the thin, pale lines that reside on my forearms. Very painful memories.

I shake them away and grab a beer. I down half of it immediately. I never was a drinker before. But pain and longing have turned me into one. Red and Andrew help a lot, though. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have my brother or husband.

I dwell on everything for a minute, swirling the beer in the bottle. Then I make up my mind on a very stupid, selfish decision and get up, pushing my chair back.

Oh, how I wish Red or Andrew would show up.

€*€

I sit in the bathroom, staring at the blade in my hand. My thigh is already stained with blood and crisscrossed with older scars. I slice the blade through my skin without even flinching. I've done it so much it doesn't even hurt anymore. Don't you think that's sad?

My tears mix with the blood. I jump when someone knocks on the door. My boyfriend isn't supposed to be home yet. Nobody is. I'm supposed to be alone, but thank God he showed up.

"El? Baby Bro, are you okay? You're worrying me," Red says from the other side of the wood.

"N-no," I manage to choke out. I hear Red open the door. Then his steps pause. I look up. His expression is of pure terror. But it turns into an expression I never wanted to see- shame. Shame and anger.

"Son of a bitch," he growls. He gets on his knees in front of me, easing the blade from my hand and tossing it behind him. "Elliot, what is this? How long has this gone on?"

"A-a couple ye-years," I reply. "It started after he died. I couldn't take it anymore, Red! I just couldn't!"

The tears begin again. Red looks at me with troubled eyes and embraces me. I only cry harder at his arms around me. I hear him cussing out everyone from Andrew, to Blake, to himself. Blake's was the most brutal, understandably. His death was still a raw wound for all of us, and I'd just stuck a hot iron in Red's and twisted.

That doesn't mean it's not painful for me. Not only teenagers cut. Not only 'emo' kids cut. Adults cut too. I actually committed right after Blake died. It scared Red to death.

"Man, how could you do this?"

I shake my head as Red presses gauze to my thigh. "I just can't take it anymore. This house is full of reminders, and you know it. I mean, hell, his damn name is written on his door! Every time I walk in the barn, Grenade has his head over that door. Louise, his guitar, hangs in my room."

"Shh. I know. Trust me, it's hard for me too. Blake and Blaze look exactly alike, and I have to live with that. But it gets easier, I promise." He scrolls through his phone, one hand on my knee. "I cut in high school. My therapist told me that one trick is to wear a rubber band and snap that on your wrist when you feel the urge, and another is to draw something pretty on your arm or leg or stomach."

He shows me a photo of his arm. He had drawn an intricate pattern with a red sharpie. Another pictured his wrist, a rubber band circling it and surrounded by red marks. I flip his arm over, studying the familiar marks. Except they're on someone else's wrist this time.

That's the unfamiliar part. I'm not used to seeing someone else actually go through what I fight everyday. I had thought nobody else knew what it was like to want to end your life everyday, to stand on a roof or hayloft and want to just jump. To have your skin burn for a razor. To see a cabinet full of medicine and contemplate downing a bottle.