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She Cuts Herself (part 3)

Content Warnings: Domestic violence, psychological abuse, emotional manipulation, self-harm, gaslighting, destructive behavior, partner isolation, trauma, PTSD.

I sat up and looked around, trying to remember where I was. My eyes were gummy as I tried to blink away the dream. Gummy and a little wet. The only light was from the screen in front of me. I was in the kitchen, at the table. I’d fallen asleep at the keyboard again.

In front of me was a screen of “m”s. I let the page count come into focus: 70 . It should have been four or five. The time read 2:13. How long had it taken to fill 70 pages with one letter? An hour? I couldn’t have been out that long. Half hour? I closed my eyes and stretched, rubbed my forearm where I could still feel the dig of the keys; I felt their indentations under my fingertips and started desperately trying to rub them away.

I hit Save and closed the laptop. I’d worry about the rest when the morning was really morning. I couldn’t even remember just then what I’d been typing when I fell asleep.

I tried hard not to wake up all the way as I made for the bedroom. I slipped under the covers, and as I slid the the laptop between the bed and nightstand, I felt Michele shift and take a deep breath, and froze. She reached over and put her hand on my side, rolled over to put her mouth near my shoulder.

“Dela?” She half-whispered, her voice thick with grogginess and fry. “What time is it?”

“After two,” I said over my shoulder. “Sorry I woke you. I’m exhausted.” With my head turned, I could just see the top of hers.

“Mmmm,” she said, and took another deep breath. I don’t know if she was smelling my hair, or just breathing, but it turned into a yawn. “Talk morning?” she asked. My heartbeat slowed; she was fading fast.

“Yeah,” I said. I was fading fast too. Good. I wanted new dreams to get rid of the ghost of the other. “Morning make breakfast.” I caught her yawn and nestled into the pillow.

When I woke again it took a few seconds to remember where I was. I lifted myself up on my elbow and hear Michele stir behind me. She slipped her around me and pulled herself against my back. “Morning,” she said into my shoulder, and gave it a kiss.

I smiled and lay back down, turning to face her. “How’d you sleep?” I asked.

Terrible,” she said with a pretend frown. “Someone woke me up in the middle of the night.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, with an exaggerated frown of my own.

She smiled. “I forgive you. How about you?”

I frowned again, for real. “I slept fine once I was in bed,” I started. “But before that…” I trailed off, trying to remember and not to remember.

She waited and said, “Before that…?”

I realized I’d been holding my breath. I couldn’t let go until I’d answered. “Before that, how about some coffee?” I immediately felt better for the exhale.

She grinned. “I’ll start it.” She kissed me quick on the nose and jumped out of bed. “You do your morning ablutions.”

After she left the room I stretched, dreading and looking forward to talking out the dream. I couldn’t remember that much, mostly just the end. But Michele was right; everything was always more bearable after my morning shower.

As I went into the bathroom, an impulse made me look at the sink. Nothing unusual there. What was I looking for? I racked my brain. The tweezers. (Tweezer?) I checked the medicine cabinet; there it was, right where it should be.

I stood outside the shower until it ran hot, then got in and lathered up the bath scrubber. I scrubbed down, washing away the grime from my eyes, and the memory of keyprints from my arm. I scrubbed my thighs without looking, but I couldn’t keep my hands from lingering, feeling the soapy bumps under my fingertips. Ow, there! I looked. No, that was just the bruise from Friday. Still, I shuddered. That part of the dream, the cut, the burn of it, had been… so real. It lingered.

I could smell the coffee when I opened the bathroom door. I got dressed in a coffee I followed it to the kitchen and sniffed dramatically. “You are a goddess,” I said.

“I know,” Michele said through her Puck smile. “Did you finish your grant proposal at least?”

“I… don’t think so,” I said. “I fell asleep at the keyboard, I’m not sure how much I got done.”

“Is that what had you upset?” she asked. “You have until Wednesday, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I mean yeah Wednesday, no it wasn’t that. But maybe it should be, though. I don’t know when I’m going to find time, my next two days are packed pretty tight.” I checked myself before I started a stress spiral.

“Well,” Michele said, “good news. You’ve got an extra couple of hours today; I cancelled today’s appointment with Melanie.”

I caught myself before I reacted, answered neutrally. “Did something happen?”

She looked into her coffee and gave her combo smile-shrug that meant it was nothing to think about. “Nah. I just wasn’t feeling it.”

“Oh.” I said. Then I thought to smile. “Well. Thanks for clearing the calendar. Grant shouldn’t be a problem now!”

“You’re welcome!” she sing-songed.

We heard the neighbor next door should for her kids to hurry up. Michele glared at the window. “I should call in a noise complaint,” she mused. “Nosy bitch.”

I tries to soothe before it built up. “We don’t know it was her.”

She turned the same glare at me. “Maybe you don’t. But I do.”

I focused on my coffee, which I was holding in stiff hands. “Do we have to talk about that night?” When I looked up, Michele was still looking at me and I could pick up different expressions fighting under the surface. She finally settled on consideration. Smile-shrug. “Nah. I’m sorry, I know it upsets you. Just…”

“I know,” I said. “Thanks.””

”So what was it, then?” Michele asked, sipping her coffee but looking at me.

“What was what?” I asked, confused.

She rolled her eyes. “That had you upset. If not the grant proposal.”

Oh,” I said. “Oh, nothing, really, it’s just while I was asleep I had a fucked-up dream.”

“Oh. Was I in it?”

“No.” I frowned. “”Well… No.”

“No well no?” she asked? “The ‘well’ sounds like a yes.”

I shook my head. “There was someone named Michael, but he was a guy.”

She cocked her head and squinted. “Were you his girlfriend?”

I hesitated, like I always do when she gets that cocked-head squint. “Well.. Yeah. But it wasn’t you.”

She scanned her eyes back and forth like she was looking for something she was missing. “Were you living together?”

I stared hearing my pulse in my ears. “Yes, but—”

“In an apartment?”

“Yeah, but—”

“That sure sounds like me. You dreamed I was a man?”

“No. I told you, it was a fucked-up dream. It was a nightmare.”

She didn’t lose the squint but seemed mollified. She asked, “What happened in the dream?”

“I cut myself.”

Here eyes went round and she looked at my legs “Again?”

“In the dream.” She relaxed. “But I wasn’t really me in the dream, either. I was… like me but a different me.”

“You were another you who still cut herself?”

“I didn’t cut myself in the dream. I mean, I’d never cut myself before, in the dream. And I did it… I think I did it to get away.”

“Isn’t that why you said you cut yourself before?”

“Yeah, but—” I hesitated again. We’d avoided an argument already, I didn’t want to start a new one. ”Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what it was about.”

She sat back. I saw too late how sullen she looked. “So you had a dream that you cut yourself to escape a bad relationship. With the male version of me.”

I closed my eyes. “Oh, fuck, Shell, please don’t do this.”

“Don’t do this? Oh, is this another one of the things I do? Is this what I do that gives you nightmares?”

I still hadn’t opened my eyes. I tried to speak calmly. “Shell, we talked about this. This is the thing where you start seeing criticism where there aren’t any. You told Melanie you’d listen next time—” I started as something shattered. Behind me, and I opened my eyes.

Fuck Melanie! And fuck you!” She yelled in her shrill little angry-pixie voice that would probably seem funny if I didn’t know what went along with it. “You wanna escape then fucking do that! Fucking leave!” She punctuated each sentence with a thrown cup or bowl. She wasn’t trying to hit me with them, just sending them to shatter around the room. This was familiar. I didn’t think she’d ever hit me, but as she grew angrier they came closer and closer. I left for the bathroom. A breaking plate followed me, and then so did Michele.

That’s it, run away!” she shot down the hallway. “That’s what you want, right?” As I touched the bathroom doorknob, her footsteps were hot behind me. I slipped in and shut and locked the door. I felt deja vu as the knob rattled and the pounding began, then both at the same time as she used on hand for each.

My hands were in my hair as I sank to the floor with my back to the wall. I let go of my head and gripped my knees. The pounding became occasional, replaced by screaming my name, obscenities, accusations. I shut my eyes but that just made let me focus more on the sounds at the door and of the blood pounding in my ears. I started to rub my hands up and down over my thighs, feeling the raised scars through the fabric of my slacks; my nails dug into the fabric, trying to scratch through.

When dishes started thudding and breaking against the door, I jumped up and threw open the medicine cabinet. The tweezers were where I’d seen them, not twenty minutes before. As I picked them up, the crashing sounds at the door became background noise. I ran my thumb over the point. Once, then harder, and I could hardly hear the sounds at all; I remembered that feeling, from the dream… from before the dream? I didn’t know how much I could remember from before the dream. Where had I met Michele? It seemed lost in an uncreated past. Either way, I knew this sharpness. I knew it was sharp enough to cut.

I pulled down my slacks and placed the point among the crisscross of old, white scars. I pressed, and pulled.

I woke up.

Part 4

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