Herself Was Not Very Kind

a journey through the inner workings of one girl's mind

The world is blank. I stand alone on a white canvas, the only splash of colour as far as my eyes can see. The loneliness in my chest is pounding at my ribcage and I call out into the abyss, “Hello?” Of course there is no reply. My hands start to shake and I drag my feet across the nothingness, desperate to find something�"anything�"that would offer salvation. But as minutes bleed into hours, my hopes dwindle and I’m left with more nothing than before.

 

“Please,” I cry out. I drop to my knees and beg for someone to hear me, to notice me, to save me. My eyes close and I drop my head into my hands.

 

“You pathetic little girl.” There is a voice.

 

My neck snaps up, and I nearly scream when I see whom the voice belongs to.

 

It’s me.

 

She is glaring down at me, shaking her head and gritting her teeth. “You’re worthless, you know.”

 

“I’ve done nothing wrong,” I say.

 

She laughs in my face. “Nothing wrong? Nothing? You’re denser than I thought.”

 

I give her a hopeless look.

 

She points a finger at me. “You’re the one who stranded yourself here, and you can’t even find anyone to help you!” She shakes her head and starts to walk away, muttering something under her breath. I can only just barely hear her saying, “Weak. Stupid. Useless.”

 

I rise to my feet. “Wait�"”

 

She turns around so fast I don’t even have a thought to react, and she slaps me so hard across the face that I stumble back to my knees. I hold my cheek and look up at her. There is loathing on her face.

 

“Useless,” she repeats and disappears.

 

After a moment, I’m able to gather myself again and continue searching for real help. I come across myself again, but this time she’s crying.

 

“Why?” she’s screaming at me, “Why would you do this to me?”

 

I try and calm her, but she’s inconsolable. She tries to shove me away when I try and hold her, screaming louder and louder every second. The sound is so sharp that I drop her wrists and back away until I can’t hear her shrill scream anymore.

 

Tears of my own are streaming down my cheeks when I stagger into another version of myself. This one doesn’t hit me and she isn’t crying; she’s cradling something small in her hands and looking down at it so fondly that my chest aches with desire. I step closer, tentatively, so I’m able to see whatever is in her hand. It’s a little, shiny blade. It rests on her palms, which I can now see are crisscrossed with little scars.

 

She doesn’t look at me when she says, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

 

I swallow hard, and ask, “Is what beautiful?”

 

She smiles, tilts her head. Her voice is calm, but thick with emotion. “My little lifeline.”

 

I trip over my feet as I try to run away, and I end up curling myself into a ball, right there in the nothing. My voice�"or voices, I don’t know which anymore�"starts out quietly, just so that I can barely hear the words. Ugly. Dull. Worthless. Repugnant. At first, I try and ignore it, but then the words get louder and clearer and the voices�"it’s definitely plural�"are stronger and surer of themselves. I press my hands to my ears, but I can’t block anything out. I scream and try and drown out the words that way, but my voice, my true voice, is lost among the sea of my other voices. So I succumb, eventually, and lie there with my knees pressed to my chest and words crawling under my skin. I can feel the voices inching their ways into every divot inside of me, into every crack and every crevice, until I’m nothing but a jumbled mess of hatred. My own thoughts start to reflect the words, until my mind looks something like this:

 

 

                                    UGLY

FAT                                            BORING

                                                                                                GROSS

              STUPID

                                                                        WORTHLESS

                                    IRRELEVENT

UNDESERVING

                                                                                                            UNLOVED

                                                DISGUSTING

                        EMPTY

                                                                                    USELESS

DISPICABLE

                                    INSUFFERABLE

                                                                        ABHORRENT

            REPULSIVE

 

 

I can’t breathe.

 

 

I crack my eye open for a second, and I cry out when I see the millions of versions of myself screaming insults into the air, waiting for me to inhale their cruelty. Where there once was an endless chasm of white, there is now an infinite circle of myselves gathered around my pathetic little body and all their faces are painted with loathing. Self-loathing. They hate me, but I am them.

 

They are me.

 

I slowly unclench my muscles and drag myself into a standing position, and get right in front of one of my clones. She isn’t seeing me; she’s a robot, set to destroy. I gulp a huge breath and scream, as loud as my mangled throat will allow, “SHUT UP!”

 

All noise stops. They stop screaming and every single gaze is now shifted on me. I’m panting and my nose is running and my knees are buckling but I’m just done done done and they need to shut up.

 

So I scream it again, “SHUT UP! JUST ALL OF YOU, SHUT UP!” I keep going, even though they have all shut up. “SHUT YOUR STUPID F*****G MOUTHS!”

 

I stop, breathing so hard and crying so hard that I can’t believe I haven’t fallen down again. “Shut up,” I say, one last time.

 

“Shut us up, then,” a voice replies.

 

A me steps forward from the crowd. She’s brandishing a knife and running her finger along the smooth blade, and her face is completely devoid of any emotion. I recognize the challenge and step forward. She doesn’t put up any sort of fight when I move to take the knife, and I snatch the weapon from her grimy little hands.

 

(My grimy little hands.)

 

I turn the blade over in my hand for a moment, then clutch the handle with knuckles so white that the skin tears on my hand. I hold the tip of the knife out in front of me and outstretch my arm so I won’t have to move as close to get her. The knife is shaking, but I lunge anyways. The blade embeds into her flesh, and a blinding pain shoots through my stomach. I howl and collapse, and she falls, too, but she makes no sound. Her face is as placid as ever.

 

We lie together, me and her, as blood flows from our identical wounds. Around us, the other mes disappear and we are left lying back on the white canvas, the world of nothing. Except this time, the colour of red begins to blossom around us and paint the canvas anew.

 

“Thank you,” I hear the other me whisper.

 

When she, too, disappears, I wonder if there was really anything other about her at all. Maybe it had just been me, all this time.

 

I exhale one last breath before my lungs stop pulling in air, before my heart stops pumping and my wound stops gushing. And as my eyes close for the last time, I feel relief swell in me and a small, grateful smile rests on my lips.

 

*

 

A police car lethargically pulls up on the curb. Neither officers are eager to face a grief stricken family, and neither are prepared for the sight of the girl lying in a pool of her own blood. The bedroom door is open, and gloves and plastic slippers are given to the officers so they could enter the room. She is lying face up, but her eyes are closed. There is a questionable smile on her blue lips, but that’s not what the officers are looking at. They’re looking at the knife jutting out from her gut, the blood soaked into the carpet beneath her, the crisscrossed slashes stretching from her palms up to her elbows.

 

“Godamn,” one officer chokes out.

 

No one ever understood completely why she killed herself, because no one was there with her the night she surrendered to herself. There was only herself for company, and herself was not very kind. 

Author's Note

reviews are appreciated. this may sound familiar to some of you, and if so, it's probably because you read my other story Inner Demons. i rewrote it here differently. hope you enjoyed, or at least felt something.

Reviews

[Baban.A.A]

I acclaimyou for this work, reaaly, it was very gripping, impressive, and great. I have to tell you that, I just can call it coincidence, but I did write one work just similar and akin to this, it is called I the mislaid me, I put it here for awhile for a contest then removed it, but it was right similar.strangely enough, the theme bells a ring; I believe it is conscious, our conscious that are silent for years inner our soul, but when you hear them , they are you, and you cann't run away from you, so you have to join them, they are all you, and yu are them. great work, and best wishes.

[Alexis]

I almost cried.. It was so good, I just felt so touched by it. I can absolutely relate to this, and what I'm going through, I hope you can continue to write brilliant pieces like this one

[luna11]

I'm speechless, this is brilliant! It's so well written. A beautifully tragic story. The idea of being unkind to yourself is so relatable and you write it in a way that is disturbing but captivating :)

[Night]

Wow...this is disturbing in every sense of the word...I feel strangely drawn to it though...
Great write!