Bad Habit

• Lucy Davies, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2009

I am satisfaction.
I am control.

Afraid to live without me.
Afraid to live with me.

Do I hurt her? Oh, no.
A little sting
And a beaded red line appears.

She carries secrets underneath her clothes.
Overlapping, thick, crusted lines.
Pink and purple, violent colour.

She slams her bedroom door in escape. Back against door she sinks down. I advance. Now is the time. I goad her. I send her waves of defeat and desperation.
It is all too easy.

She stumbles to her cupboard and withdraws from the darkest nook a small beaded bag. Now in the self destructive frenzy I have induced, she frantically shakes it, contents spewing out silver onto white carpet. Eyes blinded by angry tears she picks up her tool and begins. I have made it childishly easy; making beautiful straight red lines that bead and bleed. Pain dotting the floor.

She hones herself on me. I am steel, a whetstone. She chips away at tainted ivory flesh to reveal pulsing beauty. Hideous exquisiteness. Thick scars like purple worms snake their way across her thighs. I tell her one more, just one more. She craves it as much as I. She gladly relents to my deepest lusts, carving without notice or care. I press her small hand to her leg and retrieve a palm of blood. I make her lick it, willing her to taste her clotted metallic pain. I smear sticky handprints on her face, her chest. War paint for the battle against herself. Marking her.

I sense her hesitation; she knows she is going too far. Quickly, so quickly I force her to contemplate a life without me. Daily inescapable pain without my blissful escape. Life with no promise of secret bloody redemption.

'No', she whispers.

She’s in too far now. Addiction has set in. She cannot escape me.

I am control.

She is drifting from me, preoccupied with slimy maroon clots that ooze across her thighs. I force her to get up. She shall see my influence. She shall see my power. I make her cross her room to her mirror. She is smiling. Trancelike, she laughs on the cusp of tears. I bring my weapon up to her stomach and carve words.

Bleed Like Me.

I smile when I see it. She smiles, she knows I am gratified. She knows she needs me.

I send her happiness and liberation. A chemical rush. She returns to me every night. Willing and glad to be raped all over again. I sometimes follow her throughout her day, prodding her scars to sting if she forgets that she is cursed. And then at night, I reduce her legs to meaty ribbons, again and again. Nothing is ever enough for me.

I am salvation.

Blood drips on the carpet.

No matter how far she thinks she has come.
No matter how good she feels.
I am still inside her. She cannot run from me.

Look down girl.
Look at your scars.

I am still here.