Spider's Web

Rating: 17+

Genre: drama

Warnings: self-harming

Note: A short story about depressed musician.

It all started innocently. Probably in the elementary school, where other kids for the first time labeled me as "strange". Friends left me, because nobody wanted to be friend with this outsider, who prefered spending breaks in library, because he could avoid his bullies like this.

I started elementary school as a happy and funny kid, but I ended it as shy and asocial teenager. I tought that when I'll go to another school, everything would change. And it changed. But for worse.

Name-calling, locking in lockers, throwing things on the floor or taking my backpack and making me chase my bullies have become the norm. And I was able to deal with it less and less, I wanted more and more help. Parents didn't notice anything. The teachers didn't react. Well... They don't have to.

In high school nothing has changed. Still in love with the books, I had to throw the needles out of my shirt several times a day, and be careful at every PE so as not to get hit by a ball, at least not in the stomach. I vomited from the impact once and caused myself even more trouble. But at least the PE teacher did intervene. What I also got hit for...

I came back home and looked in the mirror on a cupboard. I took it and started to stare in the tired face of a seventeen years old boy. In middle school, I wanted to disappear, become invisible. Now I wanted to kill myself.

I threw the mirror at the floor. It broke and one piece fell from it. I picked it up with trembling fingers and pushed against my skin. I hesitated for a moment. I realized that I was sitting on the bed. In clothes. Blood is difficult to wipe from materials.

I took off my clothes, sat against the wall and pushed the glass into my wrist.

First cut for elementary school.

Second cut for middle school.

Third cut for high school.

I watched the blood trickle down my arm like tears down a girl's face in a bad romantic comedy. For some strange reason, it seemed beautiful to me.

I smiled. For the first time in a long time.

From that day on, it became a ritual for me. Breakfast, school, lunch, reading, dinner, more cuts, sleep.

My wrists were beautiful. As if they were covered in spider's web. I wanted to decorate the whole body like that, I wanted it to look like this. But I realized that people would notice, that they would ask questions and I don't want them to worry.

One day, however, I was so fed up that I decided to kill myself. I took a lot of pills, but unfortunately my father found me and called an ambulance.

The mental hospital is an interesting place. Sometimes you feel like you're more normal than all of them. Even than the staff. Funny, isn't it? I remember one girl who didn't have anything sharp on hand, so she broke her hand on the edge of the bed. Just like that, she hit it with all her strenght. And then, as if nothing had happened, she went to sleep.

I left the hospital after a month. Or two. I don't remember now. I had a lot of catching up to do in school, but I managed to finish it.

Exactly. I graduated. Due to this beautiful day, I decided to go to the club to have a drink and forget the whole damn world.

And then, sitting at the counter and telling the bartender about my hopeless life, I decided to become a musician. Yay! Maybe if no one can really give me such a feeling, then at least I'll get the platonic love of female fans?

My only friend from school had a band and one of the musicians left. So I joined them. And honestly it was great. Until the disband.

And then another and another, because nowadays it is difficult for a band to live long. You have to get really big fame in a short time, and if you do, you suddenly find out that you don't get along with your friends in terms of music you make. And again disband, disband, disband...

Breakfast, rehearsal, lunch, book, dinner, knife, sleep ... Oh yeah, that's it. It's so nice to be able to put on a happy rock star mask, smile at the cameras and bandmates and then come home or to a hotel room and cry. My world, my knife, my lines on my wrists. The psychiatrist only forbade me to kill myself, but no one said I couldn't make a few cuts a day. I mean, they said... But it doesn't matter, the lines keep popping up. More and more of them, after so many years I stopped counting.

And finally, in one of the bands, I met you. I don't know, why I fell in love with you. What happened that my heart at first stopped and then started beating as if it wanted to pop out from my chest. Well, it is like that sometimes. Stupid, hopeless, bisexual weirdo in love.

I loved you with all of my broken, crushed, scattered, torn apart heart. I loved you with all of my weak soul. I loved your eyes, your smile, your lips, your soft hair, your hands, your strong arms...

But I didn't love myself. And because of that I was sitting again on the floor with a knife in hand, when suddenly you entered my room. For the same reason you mistook the rooms as I forgot to lock the door. We were too drunk. And we both sobered up right away. Me out of fear, because you discovered my secret, and you...

"Are you insane?!" you shouted so loud that probably all visitors in the hotel heard you.

You ran to me, grabbed my bleeding wrists and looked in my eyes.

"Are you crazy? Tell me that you're just crazy."

"I don't know..." I mumbled. "Let me go. It hurts."

"But you wanted it, right?" you clenched fingers on my wrists. "You wanted the pain."

"But I wanted to hurt myself" I replied. "Other people have hurt me enough in the past. Let me go."

And you let me go. You looked at me as if I was the biggest idiot on this planet. You embraced my shoulders and led to the bathroom.

You washed my wrists with hydrogen peroxide from my own first aid kit, which stang as hell, bandaged them and led me to bed. You forced me to sit on it, you put me in pajamas, though you just put the bottom over my panties... And you put me in the bed. You covered me with the quilt, then gave me a kiss on my forehead and told me to wait.

You left my room and I waited like the child waiting for his mother to say goodnight.

You came back, also dressed in pajamas, you covered yourself with the quilt and hugged me tightly.

To be honest, I didn't understand at all, what was happening.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I love you" you said. "And I won't let you hurt yourself, okay?"

I blinked. You were serious. When I realized this, I started crying. And I was crying for a long, long time, maybe even for an hour. And you were stroking my head and repeating that everything will be okay.

And it is now. My wrists are still covered with spider's web, but white. This red spiderweb has never appeared again.

The end