March 13, 1.53 p.m.
Lucy Steller sat alone in her flat. She had been too scared to go out ever since the morning after David’s murder. She couldn’t forgive herself for falling asleep as he was being tortured.
She had slept in a warm bed, safe and comfortable as the man she loved was being tortured and murdered. She hated herself so much, she couldn’t bear to see or speak to anyone.
She took the razor, looked coldly down on to her own arm and steeled herself. The razor lightly touched her arm, a delicate but unmistakable sting. Not pain, but painful. She pulled the razor across her arm, watching the trail appear – a red tail to a steel mouse. The stinging deepened and intensified. She raised her hand. It was a cycle. She would cut, then the white fear would come and she’d feel depressed, scared and lost. Then she would have to cut until the fear stopped. Hurt made sense. The line of blood collected into a glistening red ball on her wrist. The tipping point was reached and the ball of blood rolled down her arm. Seeing herself bleed, she relaxed a little, a physical relief from her emotional pain.
Her hand moved down to the cut; she drew a second line across the first line, forming a red cross. The pain from the second line mingled with the dying pain from the first. Emotional pain was layered too. Layers and layers of harmonic pain, shouting, screaming, grieving, crying.
Blood was dripping off both sides of her arm. She cut again as the pain dulled. Each time, the dulling came more quickly, until Lucy was slicing herself every few seconds. She continued for minutes. A hundred bloody cuts, a hundred red lines spreading out in every direction like marks on a butcher’s chopping block.
Then it stopped. The tension and anger vanished and she was left sitting on the small couch, staring ahead, her pale face gaunt and drawn from a lack of food and sleep and iron.