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The noises are fading. Popping and sparking on the currents in the air like white noise and electricity. It hurts my ears.
***
“Why are you staring at me, brat?” I averted my eyes, unsure of why what I was doing was wrong. My fingers picked at the inside of my elbow and my forearm, nails digging into my skin. I had heard him say it all before, for things I didn’t understand. Like when I was going to school for the first time, and I had to go back home, I had to, or the itching feeling in my hands and arms got worse; because what if I had closed three doors and not four? What if the door wasn’t locked, or my window was open? So I was crying in the car. Silently. Fingers tense with nervous energy, wanting to pick at my skin but remembering what he had said: ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare cause more fucking problems’. But it hurt. That was a year ago. Now, I just walked out of the room, head down and passive. Distantly, I could hear him whispering to himself.
***
I scramble into my room, each step making my legs rush and fuzz with pins and needles. I have to get away from the noise. Always too loud. My arms are itching again, always itching. I look over to where my childhood toys are sitting in a small, cardboard box; the little coloured blocks peeping out. He only bought them for me because they kept me busy. I drag the box over and pull them out, wincing at the clattering sound they make.
***
It had been a few days after my seventh birthday that he told me what was wrong with me. It was the Devil. He was inside me, in my brain, causing everything to go so very wrong all the time. It was His fault that I was always so scared of hurting people, why seeing a knife made some morbid side of me harass my thoughts, like a song stuck on repeat. It made sense. What else could be the cause of it? Of such undeniable and inescapable evil? At least, that’s what he told me. I believed him, of course, because surely my own brain wouldn’t make me pick at and break my skin until it bled, or make other humans so confusing, or language so hard to grasp, or fill me with some twisted unavoidable feeling of fear if things weren’t done right? I shouldn’t always be hurting in some way. Like there’s always something else I have to do, or something else I don’t understand. A little part of me that I didn’t like to listen to would whisper that maybe it was his fault. His fault for not letting me close an even number of doors, or for taping my hand closed when I couldn’t stop picking at my arms – which just made the burning worse. No. It couldn’t be. He had always loved me. He just wanted to get the Devil out of me, he said so himself. He even said that the Devil used to be in him, but He was gone now (that little part of me hissed that the Devil was still inside him, but he had scars not scabs so that couldn’t be true).
***
Red. It starts with red. There is one red, it is smooth in my fingers. Then orange, two oranges, right next to the red. Three yellow, and four green; each smelling of old plastic and harsh chemicals, familiar. The five blue nearly topple because my hands are shaking. The six purple do fall when a loud cry of... something... rage? anger? sadness? breaks through my little glass bubble; it’s easy to stack them again though, but I can’t deny the panic that grabs and pulls my hands forward to pick them up. Then it all comes down backward, starting with purple. Then it goes back up. Again, and again and again and again. Some of the twisting inside me settles. But my arms are still burning. Like two snakes each trying to scratch out of dead skin. But there’s nothing new or pretty underneath, just blood that slides and drips down my wrists. I don’t know how many times I’ve stacked the blocks now. It’s quiet again. I hope it stays that way.
***
I was eleven when he taped my hands closed for the first time. I had started to get eczema on my elbows and arms and I hated it. Before, I would pick at little moles all over my body, mostly when I was really stressed. When the eczema went from bad to worse so did my picking. There was something morbidly fascinating about watching tiny little bubbles of blood swell out of my skin; it looked like really small little roses that dissolved and spread down to the ground. He was so... mad when he saw the scabs on my elbows. Demanded I tell him what happened. His lips were snarling and his face went red, it would be funny if I wasn’t so terrified. When I started to do it again, he ripped my hands from my elbow and dragged me into the kitchen, pulling out some duct tape. It was rough and taut on my skin; it was almost as if I could feel it pulling at each hair. It was strange taking it off, watching my fist slowly become a hand again.
***
It is cold. With each breath I can feel minuscule ice crystals forming in my lungs and on the back of my throat. There is only just enough light for me to make out the colours, they look dull.
***
The other kids at school didn’t like me all that much. They all said I was weird, or quiet, or a freak. He said they were right not to want to be friends with someone like me, who had the Devil in them – but they should pray for me, like he did (see, I knew he loved me). They were all so confusing, facing stretching and eyes glowing and dimming in ways that made my head hurt. Their eyes hurt me too. I wondered if that was because the eyes were windows to the soul, and because mine was so black it hurt to look at the light.
***
Suddenly the door bursts open, and a familiar figure stands in my door way, the brightness behind them making them seem like a black paper cut-out pressed against light. I pause for a second, because I am only halfway through blue.