Broken Strings || Niall Horan [AU]

● PART ONE: 01 | five years since

❝Setting fire to our insides for fun, to distract our hearts from ever missing them; but I'm forever missing him.❞ ▬ Youth, Daughter.

CHAPTER ONE
Three Months Later: Present Day

They’re ugly. Not beautiful or a display of endearing vulnerability. Not some form of art, a subject of photography. No. They’re ugly, and disgusting, and a clear representation of how low I've fallen, and that’s all.  

Littering my skin like conspicuous tattoos, my gaze falls upon them as I stretch my arm across the cool mattress, and I wince, because in the light of morning, it all looks so much worse. With sunlight streaming in through the cracks in the curtains, they’re as clear as day: reddish scars, once smooth skin now raw and broken, torn like fragile tissue paper, making my arm look irreparably damaged.

Everything I did last night comes back to me in an overwhelming surge. I squeeze my eyes shut, fumbling to grip the duvet tight. I tug the thick cover over my head, but it’s heavy on my body, suffocating me, and with a desperate gasp for air I pull it away from my face. You don’t need a pair of hands around your neck to feel like you’re being strangled to the point where you struggle to breathe, and that’s how I feel now. Like some invisible person is choking me from the inside, his slender fingers digging into my neck and mind and heart.

Then come the tears. Thick and fast. Soaking my cheeks. They drip down my chin, slithering across my exposed neck, travelling downwards before finally landing in small pools on the rough sheet beneath my body. I sniff sadly, and a pathetic whimper further parts my lips. Pathetic. That’s the only word to accurately describe me in this moment.

One side of my face pressed to the sodden pillow, I mull over the events of last night. I can still feel the rusty blade slicing through my pale skin, pressing deeper and deeper each time. I wonder why I never struck a vein. And then I wonder: What is it about us teenagers? Why must we do this to ourselves? Damage ourselves to the point of no return? Punish ourselves for things we can’t control? We open our wrists in a vain attempt to bleed out all our demons, and then regret it the next morning. But why? Even I can’t understand it. I guess it’s just one of those things.

This -- cutting and regretting, cutting and regretting -- is an endless cycle, one I’m stuck in to this day; I began in the winter months, which are always the loneliest, and continued right through to the summer. I don’t do it often. Once every few weeks or so to relieve the accumulated pain. Today, the date is the 6th of July, a Saturday, and last night, I cut myself so deep I thought I might pass out from the pain. It was the worst I've ever cut.

●

Five years ago exactly, I was waking up to the enticing smell of bacon and the chatter of my parents downstairs. Now, I’m waking up to nothing. My mother is either out or still in bed, trying in vain to cure a monster hangover. I already know that the latter is the most likely option, given what day it is today. Either way, I have no one. No chatter, and certainly no bacon. All I have is dried blood on my carpet, a heavy feeling in my chest, and the dull promise of cornflakes (which are most probably stale).

I slowly climb out of bed, pulling the pale blue duvet up around me. I feel like a caterpillar; the duvet, big and comfy and concealing, is my cocoon. I briefly wonder if I’ll emerge as a beautiful butterfly, and even picture it, but the thought disappears as quickly as it came when I drop the duvet to my feet and am presented by the same old image of the same old me, reflected in my tall bedroom mirror. A frown pulls at my lips. I step over the duvet, closer to the mirror, and shudder in disapproval.