Jinx

Chapter 2

~Jinx~
She brought in another tray of that disgusting mashed potatoes. I sneered and laughed, a long, high pitched kind of laugh that people would call crazy. Or maybe not. I don't know, I wouldn't know. Would I? Am I supposed to know these things? As I watch her bring the tray over to me, her step light with caution, I tip my head and make a high, almost scraping noise, my eyes wide and searching for the fear and anger that always followed.

She blinks, eyes wide with oh so delicious fear, that thing that I crave, and then she flings the tray down onto my little cot and sneers at me before turning on her heel to head black through the shiny metal door. The door that's held me prisoner since I was 10. The door that I have flung myself into, banged my head on, and scratched my nails down so many times, I stopped counting after day 345. I laugh again, and launch off the cot where I had been digging into my wrist. Digging digging to get them out. They have to come out. If I don't get them out, they'll burrow deeper deeper deeper until there's nothing of me left—I fling myself towards her, my claws raised and my teeth bared. Like what they have started treating me like. A monster.

She screeches high and loud, her voice cracking towards the end, and then yanks the heavy shiny unstoppable door before practically throwing herself out and slamming it behind her, trapping the monster in its prison once more. I laugh again and suddenly start digging at my wrist again as I sit in my usual corner. It keeps all the monsters in...except the nightmares. They sneak and prod and poke and dig at me until I'm nothing. Nothing nothing but what they all have come to know me by. A monster. The monster. Jinx.

The days drag by, I'm not sure if it's Tuesday or Friday, at this point I don't even know what year it is, but I dont really care. I only care about the nightmares. Oh god...they've come again, I have to dig dig dig keep digging please someone help me I'm lost I'm lost I'm falling and broken and no one can fix me please help me someone please leave me in this corner to die—I look up as the big bad door opens again. I smile the beginnings of my usual smile, for Nancy, though it's not her that walks through that door. It's not even female. It's a boy. About my age, with tousled brown hair and deep eyes that hold all the secrets of the universe...he looks up and sees me, and my smile fades, reality crashing in for a split second. But even though it feels like an eternity,I slip off the edge all too soon, and then I'm laughing again. Laughing at what? Him him him that's what I'm laughing at. He may be new but he will come to fear me. They all do. I will crack him crack crack crack goes the egg against the floor, squish squish as people walk all over him as though he were nothing nothing nothing, nothing. Just. Like. Me.

He just stares at me, as though I were a science experiment that he was trying to figure out. "Whatcha lookin at, hmmmmm?" I laugh immediately after, subconsciously scratching at my scars again, they're still in there
somewhere...I know it and they have to come out sooner or later...

His mouth twitches at the edge. A smile? Is that what that was? What's a smile look like again? Am I still capable of smiling? Maybe if I—"Hey, Buddy. I brought you some food. You hungry?"
His soft voice startles me. I almost nod until I see the tray of mashed potatoes in his hands. I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh until I can't breath and then I look up at him to gauge his reaction, to soak up the fear that was undoubtedly coming. It never did.

He sighed and walked a bit closer, then of which I growled, making him raise a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Are you hungry?" He asks again. At this point I'll do anything to hear his soft voice again, it held no anger, harbored no fear, only kindness, and....concern...?
I look down at my wrist, which was now red and splotchy. My dull nails couldn't do real damage. They cut my nails, they cut me, but in the wrong places, they take away my weapons, my only ticket out of here. He sighs again and raises a plastic spoon to my face, that of which I make great haste to slap out of his hand, where we watch it fly across the room. I laugh, my head tipped to the side curiously as he turns
back to me, his face passive, and free of the fear that I've come to know so well.

"I suppose this isn't that appetizing." He stares down at the tray as he puts the plastic spoon down. "Are you sure your not hungry?"

I fall backwards onto my cot with crazed laughter. I mean, it makes sense, right? "Hungry? Hungry? We are always hungry hungry hungry for meat, fresh fresh meat to scare and anger and, and..—" I break off in a fit of laughter again, where as he just sits there with his hands in his lap, looking a bit concerned. He should be. They all should be. Once I finally finish, I sit up, my eyes wide and my head tipped. His face softens even more than it already was as my stomach lets out a loud roar of betrayal.

He stands up. "I can probably get you something else if you want."

I let out a HA of disbelief and return to my wrist, where I suddenly get the idea to bite bite bite through the skin with my teeth. My sharp teeth. A few seconds in, I feel cool hands on my arms and I start, flinging myself backwards and smacking at the unknown force at the same time. The boy stands before me, worry splayed across his forehead like the padded walls of this prison cell.
"You can't do that, buddy. You can't hurt yourself."

I pull back, digging with my still dull nails my dull dull dull nails why are they still rounded and dull? Into the crescent shape my teeth have made on my pale skin.

I hear his soft, quiet voice poke through the fog around my mind, and suddenly, reality is back. I blink at him, my wrist half raised to my mouth, and then look at it as though it were the strangest thing I've ever seen. I put my arm down in my lap and look up at him, my eyes wide.

He smiles slowly and picks up the tray. "Hey, Buddy." He heads toward the door and pauses with his hand on the handle. " I'm going to get you something good to eat, okay?" But he makes the mistake of opening the door. The squeak and whine of the heavy metal door sends me flying over the edge so fast, I glide glide glide straight into a cliff wall, where I fall down down down back into that deep abyss I live in, where he lives in.