Demon Stories

Josephine: I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, 1884, France

Josephine

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

1884, France

Cup your hand. Cup your hand, just curl your fingers. Just once.

In the back of the restaurant, very late at night, sometimes a client will have his hand down my dress. The hand remains flat. There is nothing there to hold. Nothing to grab onto. Just flat. Why not cup the hand just a little? Humor me. Make fun of me. Just curl your hand.

Its useless.

The little voice in my head tells me its useless, and my face goes blank. The eyes go frozen, there is nothing for me here. There is nothing for me anywhere. His fingers feel slimy, sweaty. I can never powder my skin enough. I can never bathe enough.

I can not afford to despair. I really can not afford it. To displease him, to show him my feeling, will cost me money. But I can't help myself. 

Instead, my hand travels to my chest. It finds his hand, and my hand cups his hand through the dress. He takes this to mean good things. To mean I like his hand there. Flat. He does not follow the cupping motion my hand is making.

Now that my hand is there, I am committed. To take it away would cause him to think I do not like him. I am lying. 

I am disgusting. There are times now where I will shut myself away in a room and take a small knife to myself. I do not know why it helps. I can not think why it helps. But with me, there is nothing left there in the morning. I do not scar. I can not scar. I want to scar. 

I want to destroy myself. I have the right to destroy myself. Do I not? The part of me which was taken by the demon is the ability to take control of myself. I feel robbed. Utterly taken advantage of.

I start with small cuts. Just knicks. I start on my chest. There is no point to it. But seeing the blood there. Seeing me being destroyed. It helps. Somehow it helps just a little. It helps more than weeping. My skin is weeping instead. The blood from my skin.

Next I start up my arm. The muscles there, I can not bear to look at them anymore. No matter how much I starve myself, nothing works. The muscles remain. It is the demon inside on the out. There is nothing I can do. But cut. If I cut at it, shred it, for a few hours it looks destroyed beyond repair. No thinking of the pain. There is no pain which can match what I already feel. Is there? No, I don't think so.

Down and down the arm, I come to the wrist. I stare at it for a bit. I can see the main blue vein through my wrist. It looks beautiful at first, in a fascinating way. But it ceases to be beautiful once I remember it is mine, the cognition which comes in a few seconds. Distantly, I sever this with a wide slash and here I fill my washing basin with the blood which is released. 

The secret is, there is already water in the basin. The blood mixes with the water, and at first again it is pretty. The blood swirls like a little ballerina made of liquid. But it ceases to be pretty, and the liquid is completely red as the quick droplets drop with little splashes.

Here comes the second wrist, slashed. But this loss of blood is not enough. So I submerse my hands and wrists into the liquid. Don't let it coagulate. Don't stop the blood, goddess of mercy. But this is as far as I get. Always.

I can not die. No matter how determined. No matter how much I do not care anymore.

So I take up the knife again. I watch in the mirror as I drag the blade down my cheeks like I am applying make up like everyday. More blood. More failures. More nothing.

When will it end? It will never end. 

It will never end.

As these words repeat in my mind, I begin to cut my hair with the bloody blade. But guess what. That will be back, too, in the morning. I am forever stuck as the person I was when I became a demon. I will never be the beautiful woman I know I am. I will never be anything, and this is my torture. But torture seems to be such a small word compared. 

I am so small. Oh this nothing I am.

What is to become of me, this nothing? This nothing who can not destroy herself.

I'll just repeat the same day over and over. Over and over.