Mechanical Anger Eradicator

A girl's attempts at suicide are failed and she doesn't understand why.

    I wish I could die.  I didn’t know why I was unable.  I was human after all, like everyone else.  I was born 17 years ago.  I had a mother and a father.  I had siblings.  I had a life.  Why couldn’t I have death?
    Life was awful.  Daddy was a drunk.  My siblings and I... we were beaten every night.  Before we were put to sleep, we had to get in a line in no particular order.  Each of us had our own switch that we’d picked from the lone tree in the front yard.  We had to take those with us when we got in line, and then when it was each our turn, we had to give the switch to Daddy and he’d give each one of us ten licks.  My brothers and sisters were struck on their backside.  Not me.  Daddy liked to switch me from the back of my ankles up to the back of my thighs and back down again.
    I could typically handle the first few strokes.  Ya know, grit my teeth and bare it.  But after those first two or three... That’s when I started feeling the pain.  It felt like angry hornets were attacking my legs.  The stinging was almost unbearable, but I’d just stand there.  I didn’t have any other choice.  If I fell or yelled or even moved, well... Daddy would lose count and have to start over.
    By the time my turn was over, I could have sworn my legs were on fire.  Bloody welts were left behind from where the switch’d bit into my skin.  I could barely walk up the stairs to get to my bedroom, but somehow I made it.  I had to make it, or else I might have had to relive that nightmare twice in the same day.
    I never did cry, though.  We weren’t allowed to cry.  “Stop your damn crying before I give you something to cry about!”  That’s what Daddy would say if my eyes started to well up.  Because the moment a tear hit that dusty, wooden floor, he’d make me wipe my eyes, stand up straight, and whip me again.  Three more licks for each tear on the ground.  And I think he left the floor dusty on purpose, just so he’d be able to count how many tears had fallen.
    There wasn’t much to be done about it, though.  I didn’t go to school.  I rarely even went outside of the house - and when I did, it was like I didn’t exist.  Nobody noticed me, nobody smiled.  And I always saw other men with girls about my age... Girls that were beaten black and blue, some even with fresh wounds.  I didn’t understand.  And there were women with boys... Boys that fell victim to domestic violence, or was it just discipline?  That’s what Daddy called what he did to me... What he did to us... Discipline. 
    There came a day when I decided I wasn’t going to put up with his treatment anymore.  I was going to escape.  But the only way out that I saw was death, and I was okay with that.  I tried to kill myself... I tried to kill myself so many times, but each and every attempt had failed.
    The first time, I got a hold of a bottle of sleeping pills that Mommy kept in her medicine cabinet.  I took them... I took them all, right after I got my licks for that night... Right before I went to bed.  They tasted bitter, but I just ignored it, because after I fell asleep that night, I wouldn’t wake up again.  At least I thought I wouldn’t.  The next morning did come, though, and I woke up in my bed, the empty pill bottle on my nightstand.  Daddy came in before I could hide it and he saw it, and for a moment he just stood there, looking at me with a chilling gleam in his eye.  Then he laughed and shook his head, grabbed the bottle and shoved it in the pocket of his tattered, old jeans.  “You can’t die.”  That’s what he said to me.  But I didn’t understand why.  I would have asked if I wasn’t so afraid.  I got ten extra licks that night and neither of us talked about it again.
    A few months later, I tried again.  I found a thick piece of rope in the backyard and that night, after my licks, I hanged myself in my closet.  Strangulation wasn’t a pleasant way to go.  My body panicked and jerked and struggled to breath, but eventually I just stopped moving and everything went black.  Peace.  Peace at last.  At least for a little while.
    I woke up the next morning, laying in my bed with a cold compress all around my neck.  Daddy was sitting there in a chair a few feet away from my bed and my eyes immediately went to him when I opened them.  He was just grinning down at the rope, playing with it quietly.  The very same rope I’d used to hang myself up.  “You can’t die,” he said to me before he left the room.  I got fifteen more licks than usual that night.
    I didn’t try again until a year after that.  Up until then, I’d felt like a complete failure.  I couldn’t die, but I didn’t know why.  So I just gave up.  And I let Daddy torture me with that switch.  But there came again a time when I didn’t want to be alive any more.  So I decided to take action again - and I would make sure that I’d die this time.  I didn’t want to live anymore.
    After everyone had gone to bed, I took Daddy’s pocket knife from the kitchen, locked myself in the bathroom, and started to cut my wrists.  It hurt, but I kept pressing the blade into the vein, trying to cut it.  Blood came up from the surface, but the vein didn’t spurt vein as I imagined it might.  I squinted my eyes in confusion and began to dig more fervently into my wrist with the knife.  But the blood wasn’t coming.  After about a minute or two of cutting away, the knife hit something that was not human flesh.  I looked closer and... I couldn’t believe my eyes!  There were wires... Wires wrapped around some sort of steel rod or something.  They were blue and yellow and red and white and black.  Wires!  Humans weren’t made of wires!
    That’s when I realized I wasn’t human at all.  I was a robot.  I could feel and think and breath and act like a human, but I wasn’t one.  This discovery only made my desire to die even more desirable.  So I began to cut through every wire that I saw.  But it didn’t do anything.  I just lost feeling in my arm.  I couldn’t move it.  Then I began to stab my chest, digging the knife as deeply as it could possibly go.  With two firm twists and a jerk, everything went black.
    When I came to again, I was sitting in a chair.  I looked at the wrist I had severed, and found that I had a new hand.  I looked down at myself.  I had a new body.  There weren’t any marks on me, although I remembered exactly what I’d done to myself.  I stood up and looked at the backs of my legs.  Not a single scar.
    And there was Daddy, standing there by the door, talking to a man dressed in blue wearing a toolbelt.  There was a girl that stood behind him, a girl about my age.  I couldn’t see her face, but I could see the bruises along her arms from where she’d been grabbed.  She looked up for about three seconds and the light caught her face in a way that accentuated every bruise, every scar, and every cut.  Our eyes met if only for a second, and I knew.  I knew we were the same.
    When I looked at Daddy again, I saw him grinning at me, and the mechanic left, jerking the girl along with him.  I could only stand there in fear as he came towards me, brandishing my switch.  But there was nothing I could do.  There was nothing to be done.  I could live, but I couldn’t die.  I was made for this.  My name is Mae.  I am a Mechanical Anger Eradicator.  I was created with the hopes of preventing the abuse of real people.  Everyone gets angry sometimes, and if you feel like you need to be violent with someone, be violent towards me.  Because I’m not a loved one.  I feel and I live, but I’m not human and I can’t die, but I have to accept it because I was made for this.

Author's Note

This is just a short story I did during the break I had between classes today. I don't really know what to think of it, but comment away.

Reviews

[WriterSki7]

Nice . . . What a life. To be the object of one's rage. A very interesting story to be exact; Satisfactory, I could say. Nicely composed, well made, and rather original. I give you a C for Creativity.

Might I inquire as to what inspired you to write this? Were you the victim of abuse, perhaps?

[Morrigan]

I love it woman!! This story gave me chills!!