Trigger warning! This writing has somewhat graphic depictions of self harm and suicide.

It’s not his name that matters. It’s not his name because it’s ever single other part of him that means so terribly much that I can’t seem to handle it. His sickly, honey sweet voice oozes in my head, a sugary sludge concoction of love and fear that’s being forced down my throat.

Get out.

He’s in there. I can feel him, squirming just beneath the surface, ticking along my skin like an insect’s legs triggering the trip wires of my wispy arm hairs.

Get out.

My skin is splotchy and red from nail marks, epidermis irritated by the constant frantic dragging of keratin that threatens to tear through, but never quite gets there.

GET OUT.

My breath comes in ragged pants, each inhalation of air rattling its way through my respiratory system in a kind of way that makes me believe that it too, longs for escape.

GET OUT!

My knuckles whiten as my fingers tighten around the polished wood handle of the knife, the blade shiny and reflecting my tormented face in a warped mockery of my terror. It tremors ceaselessly, a testament to my wavering strength as the cool bite of the knife tears into my already ravaged skin.

OUT!

The knife slices through my skin as if it were nothing more than a brick of softener butter, covered by a thin layer of tinfoil wrapping. The pain screams out at me, and I hear his voice. Begging. Pleading. Tugging from inside, trying to tear down my will.

Get him out.

The knife delves deeper, blood weeping from the epidermal river I’ve created. But I can’t stop. He’s in there, I know he is, I can’t stop thinking about him. He’s everywhere, everywhere I look, everything I smell, taste, touch…so I know he’s rooted somewhere deep in my chest, pulling at my veins and arteries like a sick homosapien puppeteer.

Is he real? No. Maybe. Yes. What is real? I feel him in there. That’s real. The tugging of nerves that send urges straight to my brain. That’s real. The clawing from inside my chest. That’s real.

I want out.

And there’s only one way.

I feel one of the puppet strings give way, feel the buzz and static of the pain fill my ears. Can’t see. Can’t hear. Can’t breathe.

Out.

I drag the blade down, severing those twisted puppet strings, the blue and green ones that wind throughout my body. Those computer wires that keep his CPU running. The vessels pumping sick red ooze throughout my body, the same red ooze that now drips down onto the matted carpet of this tattered hotel room. The static reaches my eyes, closing in around my vision as bugs crawl into my eyes, burrowing into my brain. I don’t mind much. I know they’ll find him, and they’ll kill him.

As I press the blood soaked blade to my other wrist, I know that this time I’m finally getting him out.

I know that I’m finally getting out.