Chapter Four

The belt slithered across the floor, its black leather studded like the back of a venomous snake, hypnotically drawing me in. I could feel it tightening around my neck, constricting my veins, icy cold against my skin. 

At first, the thoughts it summoned were shards of glass in my mind, jagged and painful, impossible to ignore. I'd try to shake them loose, to dislodge the splinters, but they only seemed to embed themselves deeper. But slowly, oh so insidiously, that festering worm began to speak in a voice that echoed through my skull, its words dripping with a twisted logic. Before I knew it, the worm had devoured me whole, its ravenous hunger my constant companion. Those intrusive thoughts blossomed into vivid daydreams, and then into actions I could no longer resist.

As I sat in class, my mind would slip into grotesque fantasies. I'd imagine myself wedging my head between the unforgiving metal of a locker, feeling the pressure build, build, build until it exploded in a shower of bone and blood. Oh, how intoxicating it would be to feel my brains spilling out, to embrace a death that was agonizing and slow and all-consuming. I'd imagine the stunned faces of my classmates, their screams music to my ears.

To soothe this ache, I'd found a junkie, a gaunt specter of a man, always looking for his next fix. I'd bring him weed, and he'd unleash his fury on me, his bony fists connecting with a sickening crunch. I wasn't a masochist, I didn't crave the pain for its own twisted sake. But when I fed the ravenous beast inside me, when I gave it what it demanded, it would fall silent, its constant gnawing easing. An aching body, broken and bruised, was a small price to pay for a fleeting moment of peace in the war-torn landscape of my mind.