With a Twist
by Amber Averay
Check out Amber’s Facebook-https://www.facebook.com/TheEnchantmentSeries
I hate you. I truly hate you. You’ve made me miserable for so long. Why do you feel the need to hurt me every damn day? Why does making me miserable, making me wish for escape by suicide every day, seem to be the only way you can be happy?
What is wrong with you?
What is wrong with me?
I walk with my eyes downcast, so you can’t see me looking anywhere. I walk with shoulders hunched, to make myself as small as possible and hope to avoid notice. I walk behind others, seeking camouflage in numbers. I don’t want attention, but I get it because you look for me. You and your friends.
I am sick every night. I tremble with nerves every morning. I fall asleep to the echoes of your taunts thundering through my head, I dream of being the helpless fly caught in the centre of your malicious web, and you and your friends are the spiders creeping closer, closer, eyes glittering, fingers twitching, always ready to attack.
You’ve urinated on me, you’ve beat me with cricket and baseball bats. You’ve given me black eyes, left used tampons in my locker, poured sour milk over me, rubbed glue and chewing gum through my hair. You spit on me, crack elbows into my skull, pulled knives on me. Threatened me with stabbing, smacked my head into brick walls. Pasted dog shit over my jacket.
Worse than the physical abuse is the verbal. You and your friends constantly following me, telling me how fat I am, how ugly: ‘You’re so ugly you should have been drowned at birth!’ ‘I feel sorry for your parents, having to look at that face every day.’ ‘Don’t look at me! Just the sight of you makes me want to puke.’ ‘If I was your mother, I would have thrown you in a bucket the minute you were born.’ More words to that effect. Pushing me down the stairs, with an innocent, ‘I’m so sorry! But you’re so fat that wherever I am you’re in my way.’ ‘Don’t run, last time you did you caused the Boxing Day tsunami.’ ‘Do us all a favour and kill yourself already! If you can find a knife big enough to cut through that flab.’
And don’t think I haven’t considered it. When I hear the same things day after day, for most of my life, even from ‘friends’ and total strangers – well, everyone can’t be wrong, can they? It must mean that the fault lies with me. But why do you need to tell me all the time? Do you think I don’t know I’m huge? Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I’m stupid? Of course I know I’m ugly – everyone tells me, and I can see it when I dare look in the mirror.
You know, by the time I’d reached twelve years old I figured I’d heard everything, experienced every kind of bullying possible. But high school showed me how naive I was, how foolish. How protected I’d really been. It’s as if when we all reached our teenage years your creative cruelty shot into overdrive, while the big neon sign over my head saying ‘torment me’ grew brighter.
I always think I’ve grown stronger, tougher. That nothing you say or do will ever affect me again. I sometimes think I’ve grown immune to you, and your words, your actions. But there is nothing that can ever really pad me against your fists, your weapons, your barbed tongues.
I have bald patches where you’ve pulled my hair out. I have scabs and healing marks over my arms from where I’ve hurt myself, to prove that I can still feel something. To prove to myself that I still have control over something in my life. It’s a compulsion, it’s mine, it’s – it’s not something I have to explain or justify to anybody. It’s my secret.
But what I still don’t understand is why – why can you only feel happy if you’re making my life hell? And when adults tell me ‘these are the best years of your life’ – what the hell is that? If this crap show is the best I can expect, then why don’t I just finish it all now? End it, here? Because if this is as good as it gets, then why stick around and keep taking it. Ending it will mean freedom – peace – safety. Perhaps a few more moments of pain, inflicted by me this time, and then – oblivion.
But why? Why the hell should I be the one to have nothing? You’ve taken every scrap of pleasure I might have experienced and shredded it with your poisoned talons. You’ve destroyed each moment of happiness I have ever had. I am terrified of going out, being among large groups of people, meeting strangers.
People petrify me.
I am scared all the time. And you know what I want now? I want to make you feel that kind of fear. I want you to know how it is to walk out your door and expect everyone to descend upon you, shouting, abusing, throwing, wielding. Threatening. Seriously – I want you to feel terror when you see me, the same heart-thundering, palm-soaking, nerve-shredding fear I feel when I see you, or hear your voice.
I would stab you with a sharp knife – the one you don’t think could cut through my blubber. It would slice so much more easily through your flesh, perhaps even strike bone. The perils of being skinny, hey?
Or maybe I would do something dramatic, like have you tied down somewhere, shove a cloth in your mouth to silence your disgusting voice, and have acid slowly – slowly – drip, drip, drip on your kneecaps. Imagine that chemical eating through flesh, muscle, tissue, biting through to the bone – and then gnawing through that, right through the leg? Imagine the pain that would cause!
Or perhaps I should do something about that evil tongue of yours? Stretch it as far from your lips as possible, and then use a nail gun to secure it to the tabletop – every time you tried to use it, pain would spear through you. Bloody saliva would puddle on the tabletop, mixing with your tears and staining the old wood, leaving its own kind of scar.
Maybe I could find a use for those bats you’ve used so cheerily on me – cricket, baseball, hockey sticks, tennis racquets? I have not forgotten one thing you’ve said or done to me through the years. They resonate within me, jabbing me with hurt and fear while simultaneously firing my imagination and determination.
What kind of revenge would you like? What would suit you? I want to do something you’ll really appreciate. Something that is tailored to you. I want you to experience every emotion in the last minutes you’ll have on Earth. You’ll have confusion, anger, disdain, mockery, stubbornness, before migrating to uncertainty, worry, fear, pain, and then assurance that this is all you will know for the rest of your life. You will understand that I am in control – and you are the fly caught in my web. Each strand of it primed to cause you agony, to wring only the most heartfelt pleas from your burning throat… Oh, your throat. Imagine toxic chemicals dripping onto your throat, biting through the skin there, eating through to the voice box, the airway – this shouldn’t make me happy, but it does. It really does!
You have no idea what I am planning for you…
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