Care For Me Not, I'll Hurt You Too Much

It was freezing. Your fingers were so cold you could barely move them. Your toes tingled with the feeling and nothing that they touched felt real. All of your appendages felt numbed and swollen from the cold. Your breathing was stretched and thin as it felt as if there was a heavy weight pushing against your chest and back, restricting your lungs to minimal movement. Your throat even felt tight and enclosed, even though only your sweater was wrapped around it, and that wasn’t even that tight, it was just there to block out any cold that threatened to sweep underneath your minimal layers of clothing. It did practically nothing to warm you though. Even the smallest sliver of chill that creeped its way underneath your shirt, or up your pants leg often provoked nearly violent shudders that rumbled through your entire body, making you quake in your own embrace.

You knew it was stupid, just sitting here in the cold coming through your open window. You didn’t even bother to cover yourself up with anything but your sweater. You could have easily gotten up and creeped down to the hall closet and grabbed a blanket or a thick towel, just something that could have served to warm you up. But at the moment, you felt as if you needed this numbing cold on your entire body. You needed it in order to stop the ache.

The back of your skull still stung and throbbed with the slightest movement of your head. The painful tingles trickled around your head, making every movement feel agonizingly painful. Even your eyes felt tight as they pulsated inside your sockets. The edges of your eyes felt as if someone had their fingers pressed harshly against the rims as you scanned your eyes all around your virtually empty room.

You woke up in your bed again, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat made everything stick to your body. You were dumped into bed fully clothed again, so the feeling of your dark colored jeans sticking uncomfortably to every part of your legs motivated you to strip down into your night clothes and open your window. Granted, the entire time you traipsed around your room looking for the necessary sleep items you winced and limped with nearly every movement. Your neck was threatening to become stiff again, because every time you moved it, it shot sharp, burning stings ripping up and down your neck, making your shoulders and head pound uncomfortably. Also, your right leg throbbed and stung every time you decided to step down onto it. Your hip ached and the muscles underneath your skin pinched painful pulls up your side, making your breath hitch in your throat every time.

You found out, as you changed, that there was an extremely large bruise around your hip that you didn’t remember receiving at any time while you were conscious. The busted blood vessels raced to the surface, showing where most of the damage was done by the darker colors surrounding your hip bone. It all stung and ached, and the large bruise that covered most of your hip made you start searching your entire body for more large bruises or scars. This caused you to stand, practically completely naked, in the middle of your room, looking over your stomach and the parts of your body that you could see.

Nothing else was as bad as the bruise that covered your hip. You just found and felt several smaller bruises along your back, but all of it roughly in the same area as your bruised hip. You didn’t remember receiving most of them while you were awake, so that must have meant that while you were out, your father still persisted in beating the shit out of you. But one thing you do remember is why your neck stung like a bitch.

You hadn’t checked, but you were sure that there were either very visible marks along your neck, or a very large cut. It stung horribly, and it felt even worse every time you tried to touch it. All of this of course, only served to prove your theory that there was something visibly wrong with it. Another proving point was that, when you brought your hand back down from neck-inspection, blood warmed your fingertips.

That however, was completely normal to you. You had gotten used to finding random bleeding places over the years, and it wasn’t the first—or worst—thing that ever happened. Also, just because you touched your neck and found blood there didn’t mean immediately that that was where the blood was coming from. More than likely, and because of the immense stinging, the blood was coming probably coming from your skull. It had probably dripped down and soaked your neck as you laid face down in your pillow. By the way, your head throbbed so much that every minimal sound made in the early morning became muffled. The world felt hazy and surreal behind your stretched sockets.

He had used the phone again this time. It had been a while since the last time he touched it, but you were eventually expecting that little toy of his to come back into play at some point. Except this time instead of just hitting you with the base of the phone, then proceeding to hit you repeatedly with the head of the receiver until you passed out, he added something different to the mix. This time, he decided that it would have a greater effect on you if he wrapped the phone cord around your throat first, then proceed to beat you with the receiver.

You don’t remember too much of what happened after that point. He hadn’t wrapped the cord tight enough around your neck to make too big a difference, but he had wrapped it tight enough to make you panic. You quickly began to hyperventilate as he pulled on the cord and then brought the plastic listening device fiercely down onto your skull. With every hit, it felt as if your skull was going to crack open and kill you. Either that or the receiver would be the one to break, whichever came first.

Also, your sudden harsh and forced breathing made the process of losing consciousness happen a lot quicker than before. You couldn’t help it as your throat closed up and restricted your breathing. The phone cord wrapped around it made you feel like you were choking, even though it wasn’t wrapped tight enough to do so, but just tight enough to leave a mark. Your chest felt tight, and because your harsh breathing made you feel light headed and woozy. You couldn’t even tell if the weight you felt on your chest was real or imagined.

After that, he kicked you over onto your stomach and made you smash your head into one of the material covered boards behind your couch. The addition of the phone cord wrapped around your neck during your routine beating made you realize that actual damage could be done. That thought was what triggered the panicking, making you shut off your auto-pilot and bring the full force of everything down on you as you desperately tried to claw away at the wires wrapped around your neck.

That’s also what made the effect of the damage that you felt now seem worse than it really was. It made everything happening at the time hurt a lot more because of your panic-induced awareness of the situation. Because you were actually “awake” during the beating, it took away the numbness that came along with the auto-pilot that occurred every time you felt the force of his hands. Also, because you were “awake” it made everything now: the throbs, aches, and pains, feel a whole hell of a lot worse than they hopefully really were.

You mentally cursed yourself for no reason as another shiver ripped through your body and you pulled your sweater more tightly around your torso. You looked out your opened window and over to the dark house that sat silent with sleeping occupants next door. It was then that a thought struck. Why did you panic?

You pondered it briefly before you heard Ceana’s voice echoing in your head with another seemingly random question. Isn’t that what you’ve been waiting for?

You seethe at it, responding mentally. Waiting for what?

You hated how confused you felt at your thoughts and what you claimed was hers. After all, what could you have possibly been waiting for all this time? And what the fuck did it have to do with you panicking over nearly getting fucking strangled with the Goddamn telephone cord?

You already knew that no miracle was going to happen and make your life alright again. Hell, you didn’t even know what an alright life was like. You grew up with this type of lifestyle, and all the beatings and all the pain seemed to erase nearly every good memory that you had left in you. Plus, you always heard about all these people complaining about something wrong in their lives that it seemed as if no one had an alright life. It seemed as if nothing was right with anyone. Nothing was right, hence nothing could be all right.

You knew that at the end of this long-ass, dark and hurtful tunnel there was no light waiting to shine for you. There was no greater good that was going to come along and save you then turn your world from shit to pie. No Miracle Angel was going to come running through your door and rescue you from this life that fate had charged you with. The only angel that you had to wait for was the Angel of Death.

But wasthat it?

Was that what you were waiting for? Were you really just biding your time and expecting this to come all along? Were you really just waiting…?

“waiting to die.” You finished aloud in a voice nearly above a whisper.

After a simple moment’s thought, you realized the answer.

Yes.

This was precisely what it was. That was really all that you were doing all along. Every single action of every single day seemed meaningless now that you realized what it was. Nothing you did mattered anymore, especially when compared to what was in store for you at the end of this life-story. Not school. Not drawing. Not your cousin. Not breathing. Not Gerard…

No.

He mattered to you now and you knew it. You had actually found yourself caring about him, worrying what he thought about something you did, and wondering if he felt comfortable around you. You worried whether or not he was okay when he was quiet, or if there was something wrong when he smiled. You wondered what he really wanted to ask when he would say things like “are you alright?” You worried about him, so he mattered. You cared about him, even though you knew that he would never care about a little shit-box like you. After all, he practically owned you now anyway.

But nothing else mattered, right?

He mattered but nothing else? Not even your own life mattered, but he did?

Why?

…you had no answer for this one. You didn’t even understand what was going through your mind right now. You blamed it all on your random thoughts, the cold…and him…for drawing up that blank conclusion. You hated being confused with yourself and your thoughts. You hated not knowing what even you meant by what you were thinking, saying or doing. You didn’t like the feeling of not understanding yourself. The rest of the world was already fucking confusing, and if you didn’t understand yourself, who else was there?

Gerard.

The name stuck out to you a little more than you wanted it to. Could he possibly understand you?...Did he even want to?

You had an answer for this one though…No.

Right now he thought you were a suicidal basket case that he was just biding his time with for his own amusement and gain. He already had you pegged as one of those people that someone shouldn’t waste their time on unless they were completely desperate and lonely. And he saw you as someone that hurt themselves to feel better.

You laughed aloud as you wondered what he would think of whatever scars or bruises that was around your neck, or on your face, now. You smiled as you thought about his reaction to seeing the marks left by the phone cord around your neck.

What would he think? You question.

It was then that you realized that he would probably be completely confused and baffled for a few seconds as to why those particular marks were there. He would wonder how and why it was that you had those indentations in your skin now. He would wonder briefly about how they could have gotten there in the first place.

Then, he would start to think that you were the one that put them there. He would think that you had tried to kill yourself and failed miserably, leaving embarrassing marks on your skin as evidence. Then, he would think you were even more pathetic than you originally appeared. Why? Because he would think that you weren’t even able to kill yourself properly. Probably if you did, then it would rid him of you as a burden a bit quicker than anticipated and he wouldn’t have to deal with you anymore. But no need for him to worry about that, you knew that that particular event would come sooner or later.

What would he think then?

You were hoping that he would be at least a little distraught. After all, his play-thing would have just up and died right in the middle of whatever he was planning to do with you. You were hoping that some moment of sadness would pass over him before he began to carry on as if he had never met you. You were hoping that any type of emotion would flow through him, even if it was humor. But deep down, you were hoping that it would be even a bit of sadness. If not because he cared about you in the slightest, but simply because his only neighbor just died and now he and his family were alone on the block.

But who else would notice you were gone?

More than likely it would be no one. It wouldn’t end up being a huge cover story on the front page of the newspaper reading STUDENT FOUND BEATEN TO DEATH IN OWN HOME or anything. It wouldn’t even be a really long article. More than likely there would be a bigger, more important story about a cat getting drowned in a swimming pool by a group of teenaged boys that would catch people’s interest more. Probably the most you would get would be an article entitled BODY FOUND IN HOPE COURT HOME in the very back of the paper. Then there would be a word from your principal saying “it’s unfortunate”. Then they would carry on about how the body goes unidentified to the morgue before being cremated and the ashes being lost somewhere or the urn being broken by a random dog. Then, a quick mention of your death in the obituaries section of the paper…still unnamed.

Because that was all you were…an unnamed, nonexistent member of society that was simply waiting to die.

Still…

If you were waiting so patiently to die…why did you panic? Why was it that one of the only things running through your mind was “don’t let him find out”? Why was it, that the entire time you were getting thrown around your living room…you were worrying about whether or not Gerard would discover what was really going on?

Because you cared about him…

You established that. …and he mattered. That too.

But could it be because of his recent behavior? Could it be because he might actually find out?

Lately he had been walking home with you, as usual. But now he actually began to walk you home. He had been stepping a little further down the sidewalk each and every day. And earlier he had actually walked with you up to your front steps. It made you nervous as all Hell because you knew that, as soon as you stepped through that door, you would immediately fall back into the same routine of getting beaten, blacking out, then waking up in pain back in your room or on the floor. You still didn’t want him getting closer to your father, and you didn’t want him getting hurt any further because of you….This was your punishment…not his.

But why did you panic? You thought again, realizing now that your thoughts had brought you full circle.

Whydid you panic?

The answer came to you immediately, but for some reason you didn’t want to admit that was the right one you were looking for. So, you curled up into a ball on your bed, leaving your window wide open and allowing all the cold to flood through. Your entire being hurt, but you couldn’t be bothered with that now, only hoping that the cold would just block out all your suffering. You closed your eyes in an attempt to sleep, but thought only of your answer to your own question….

No matter how long you had been waiting for it to happen…you still weren’t ready to go.