Kill Me With Words

When Beth finally saw light again, she found herself in a hospital bed with the blankets tucked up under her chin. Spencer, Marcus, Emily and her dad all sat around her, with the anticipation of her finally waking up.

"Oh, Beth..." Her dad brushed aside some hair that had fallen onto her forehead. "Not again..." He sounded disappointed. Beth hated when she disappointed her father. She was all he had left in the world, and to disappoint him like that was the worst feeling in the world.

A smiling nurse pulled back the curtain as she entered, and then drew it closed behind her. "You're awake, I see." She beamed. "How are you feeling?"

Beth tried to sit up but felt her muscles fight against her, crying out to stop moving. "Ugh," She groaned. "Sore."

"You did a lot of thrashing around it sounds like." The nurse informed her.

"I remember what happened." Beth said with a slight snappiness to her voice. Her tone immediately changed to regret. "I just don't know why I did what I did..."

The nurse turned to her father. "You said that this has happened to her before?"

Beth's father nodded. "When she was a teenager; after her mother died."

Beth could feel a pang in her chest at her father's solemn words. She thought back to when she was fifteen. Her mother had died just 6 months before she started to go crazy. She remembered how she would cry herself to sleep every night; scream at her father and threaten to kill herself so she could be with her mom again. She would tell him that he wasn't enough and all she wanted was her mother back.

"I want to die, Dad! I just want to go away! I don't want to be here anymore! I just want to be with Mom again!" Beth cried.

Her father could feel his heart breaking in his chest with every word she screamed at him. "Stop saying that, Beth. You do want to be here. Think of all the great opportunities you will have in the future. Don't let that go." He tried to reason.

"You're wrong!" She shouted back. "There's nothing good about this world. I want to die! I want to die now!" She screamed, tears flowing down her cheeks like a waterfall as she started to collapse from the inside out. "Please! Just let me go!"

"Let you go where?" Her father asked. "To the grave? Because I'm not letting you if that's what you're asking of me."

Beth started to break. "No... You don't understand..."

Her father was growing increasingly frustrated with his daughter's behavior. "What don't I understand, Beth? You're acting ridiculous."

Her shoulders shook as she let out a few more sobs. "There's something wrong with me, Dad. This isn't me."

He shook his head, trying to understand where this was going. He couldn't seem to figure out what she meant. "It is you, though. I don't understand." He stared at his broken daughter. "I'll call a therapist tomorrow and get you an appointment if that's what you want."

"NO!" Beth screamed and turned quickly, running to her room and slamming the door. She sat on the bed and thought about the razors she had hidden in her top dresser drawer that her friend had given her to hold on to so she wouldn't be able to cut anymore. She slowly walked over to the drawer and pulled it open. She dug through the clothes to find the small ceramic case that she had put the razors in. She took one out, looking at the way it glinted in the light from the lamp on the left side of the dresser. She sat down on the bed, taking in a deep breath, and cutting herself open for the first time in her life.

Beth looked at the faint, fading scars on her forearms from all those years ago as the memory faded to the back of her mind.

"Something must have triggered her." She heard the nurse saying to her father. "Stress maybe?"

"I don't think it's stress." Emily chimed in quietly. "But I do think I know what the problem is..." She looked to Marcus and Spencer.

Everyone was thinking the same thing, but it was Marcus who decided to speak up and say it out loud, making it real. "We're going to need to find a new bass player."