Evergreen Everleigh - The Wattys 2020

Chapter Two - Razor Girl

Important - Author's Note: **TW - Self-Harm**

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to include a quick but vital note here! This chapter contains very strong themes regarding self-harm, despite being short and non-graphic. This is Everleigh's breaking moment, what leads her hand to being forced towards recovery.

However, if this is too intense or you would rather not read this, I would understand and recommend you to use your own discretion here. You can always skip this chapter - you will not miss out on anything that will not be inferred later on. This will be the last chapter with intense self-harm being explicit.

Take care and put your own mental health first,

Jen x

Chapter Two

Razor Girl

As though I have simply blinked for an astoundingly long time, the world restores itself around me. The wind is howling through the orchard and a robin is perched by my head, hopping from one leg to the other.

The sensation that strikes me first is the wetness of my dress, stuck to my lower abdomen. My bloody arm rests against my hipbone and has seeped through the thin material of my dress.

Slowing, I raise the material. My eyes skim over the raised ridges of scarring that litter my stomach and inner thighs and move straight to the unmistakable dried blood on my hipbone.

Here, a single crescent-shape outline could be seen. A perfect fingernail. It was not a lie then, somehow it was the truth. I had seen my dead grandmother, spoken with her and been kissed by her.

The sight of this is all the catalyst I need to spring into action. Mud joins the blood under my nails as I push myself to my feet. I tear through the paddocks with little care for the hidden
sinkholes where I lost my wellington boots as a child.

Returning to the house is out of the question.

In some distant field, I hear Harmony laughing.

Opting for escape, I throw myself into the driver's seat of the Range Rover, thankful I
had left the keys in the ignition. I drive home with almost no memory of doing so.

My heart is thundering against my breastbone and my grip on the steel wheel continues to loosen every few seconds despite the monstrous effort and seven apple drop sweets I put into my mouth to help me focus on the road.

Swerving into the driveway of our home, I see Henry's dog, Jippers only just leap out of the way. Guiltlessly, I push him off my ankle as I bolt for the front door.

As though another eternal blink had occurred, I suddenly find myself in front of the mirror of my small ensuite bathroom.

How could I reconcile with myself that I had just spoken to my dead grandmother?

The bloody dress falls to my ankles and suddenly, I am once again Razor Girl, the world's most incompetent superhero. Sharp corners for elbows, shoulders, and hips. Hug me, and I'll pierce your kindness with my own bones. I unclasp my entirely unnecessary bra and expose my chest. My ribs are a ladder. I look like a hybrid of a skeleton, capable of scarring, and a bird plucked free of its feathers. I am raw.

I take inventory of my scars, looking to the most recent first. The newest molehill of white ridges on my inner thighs is from the incident when I had left a space in the queue at the supermarket for the girl with the ribbon in her hair, only to find out that she was never truly there. Just another dead girl.

At least she had smiled at me.

That wasn't going to be enough this time. My blood was a thrill-seeker that always wanted more. In the little box – my safety kit, I call it - by my toilet and scales, I dig underneath the forever-untouched pile of tampons, to find the box I was looking for.

I sit by the bath with a compact mirror popped open in my palm, my ears ringing. Looking at my pale, creamy skin, I wish it to be like untouched snow once more. But there are few spaces on my skin that are untouched and without scars. I can almost taste the relief that I will feel in a few moments on the tremulous air around me.

A flash of my grandmother's lined skin and blue eyes causes me to raise the blade to my cheek with haste. What does it matter if someone sees it? What does it matter what my mother will say? I am already so wrong, all wrong. All I do is hurt every situation I am in.

I forget all else as I begin to weave a story on my skin. The words begin on my stomach and stop at my wrists.

*

I hum to myself as I draw on my skin, manically, erratically, a lullaby slips past my mouth and I beg the world to hold me, keep me safe. But this is what I have instead. It is a fairy-tale of warmth. I am a small bear cub, my paws kneading against the fur-covered side of the cave I have created. There are small hiccups coming from my belly, as the story unfolds to a cocooned conclusion, where I am safe there, in the cave. The very cave breathes with safety which I crave.

I am slipping, eyes dropping, safer with each little breath. I am ready to sleep in this cave, wrapped in the arms of a fluffy giant whose very breaths are a lullaby to me. The giant is silent, kind and impossible to disappoint. I want to stay here forever.