Danielle Eaton
This story was inspired by a time in my life that was not exactly a mentally healthy time. My father was/is a heavy drinker. I often felt that he was indeed slowly killing me.
That house was always cold at night, and I had only one blanket to cover my sickeningly thing body. Dad was passed out down the hall in his own bedroom. If anyone were to break into the house, he would be too deep into his alcohol-induced coma to do anything about it. I never even bothered to worry about things like that, though. There was no television in my room, so I was forced to listen to the silence. It was the loudest silence that had ever passed through my ears. There was a musty smell that my nose eventually became accustomed to. Every so often, I would hear cars whizzing by out front; I would just lie there, wishing I were the one driving away. I did the same each time I heard or saw an airplane traveling through the sky. I wanted to be anywhere but that house.
Most nights I wanted to be able to cry myself to sleep, but that was something that my body simply rejected. My own insides refused to allow me to vent. A few months later, I figured out my own way to cry-executing my emotional freedom through my own masochistic tendencies.
I had strange feelings about that house, just like I always had, regardless of when an actually family dwelled inside of its foreboding exterior. It was only me and my dad now. I wonder if you can count the ghost that roamed through the halls each night, checking in on me periodically. It's true. Dad saw it, too.
Getting to sleep was so difficult, and that room was just killing me softly with its mystery. When I was able to drift off, my nightmares were enough to make experience feelings of regret. I would dream of malicious demons, monsters chasing me, and worst of all, screaming at the top of my lungs with no sound actually exiting my mouth. I woke up frustrated.
Two alarms went off in the morning. I could not depend on Dad to wake me up, so I had to set two of them. I would stumble into the bathroom, shower, and throw on whatever jeans I had worn the day before and any shirt that happened to be clean. I don't know how I managed to get through an eight-hour school day, but I did. Upon returning home, he would be partially sober waiting for me, snack in hand. I would go to sleep for four or five hours, and by the time I woke up, he was gone, out to the bars.
I found some old model paint and began to splash it all over my walls. I used black, blue, and red, scattering my pain all over the pasty yellow paint that originally adorned the walls. That was my own method of crying. Painting was my nightly ritual for about a month, but soon, each of the four walls were covered, a constant reminder of how severely I hated my life.
So, I returned to lying in my bed at night, having no ways of releasing all the hatred and confusion that insisted on building up. I learned how to hurt myself by holding a safety pin into the flame of a lighter until it glowed red and pressed it into my olive skin. I didn't feel a thing even though the smell of my own burning flesh gagged me. That was the only drawback.
I burned myself for a solid two or three weeks. Cigarettes leave some of the best burns, but the straightness of a safety pin was what I really enjoyed seeing. Looking at my wounds was similar to gazing at my walls. I became bored with burning and began to cut. I didn't really bleed the first few times because it actually hurt, preventing me from going too deep. I would often yelp with pain. When I became desensitized to the it, I began searching in Dad's garage for razor blades so that I could really slice myself. Sometimes, I feared that the bleeding would never stop, but at the same time, I was proud of myself, practically beaming at my wounds.
Then, the voices started. I was in the shower and my head was spinning. I felt like someone was slamming my head against the wall. Screaming in my head, loud enough to block out the natural sounds of the corrupt world around me. The voices remained for months. I tried and tried to make anything out. I was hoping that they were advising me on one of the many twisted issues in my life. Maybe they were teaching me to cry, but they just continued to scream. Nothing was ever comprehendible. Was I going crazy?
Eventually, the voices dissipated. My life improved a little. He was still drinking, though, and now, it had gotten to the point that I had to find an alternate ride to school because of how wasted he had gotten the night before. I preferred that anyway. I didn't exactly have a swell time being driven to school while he was drunk.
I was doing drugs. That helped me not to cut. When wintertime came around, it made my cuts hurt worse. Mother Nature was obviously not too pleased with my behavior.
Acid was great. What an escape. I could run around, a smile planted on my face for eight hours, but as soon as I came down, I wanted more.
I came home one night to find him passed out on the couch. That was no big surprise. He stopped sleeping in his room; the room with the windows covered with foil. He was scared of the daylight. The stairs, the ones that would lead me to my bedroom, were a waterfall and my biggest fear was, and still is, drowning.
Throughout everything, I never once stopped and looked at myself objectively. I was a waste, just like him. I was rotting away.
One night, he came into my room, waking me up. The alcohol was sweating from each and every one of his pores. I was actually afraid of him, but he just stood in my doorway looking at me. He began to compulsively slur the words "I love you." It meant nothing to me. I just wanted to die.
The very next night, he returned to my bedroom. He had his hand behind his
back. I assumed it was whichever alcoholic beverage he had chosen to consume
that night. On that particular day, the voices had come back, I put a
cigarette out on my forearm, and I had sliced the word "unclear" into my upper
thigh. He stumbled closer to my bed, once again, telling me just how much he
loved me. Before I could even let out a breath, his hand came from behind his
back, producing a knife. He started pounding it into my torso until he
himself passed out. I lay there, barely alive, but so grateful for the fact
that my life was now over with. 
I wouldn't have to endeavor anymore pain,
frustration, guilt, sadness, or any other emotion that one usually attempts to
stray away from. I died that day. May I rest in peace?
I'm an aspiring writer majoring in English. Currently, I'm living off of my mother and stepfather. Writing as much as possible. Entering too many writing contests. Working too hard for someone who is unemployed.
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Another story by Danielle: Baker Act Me