Blood

I bent my fingers at each of the three nodules tensed them up the best I could and yet to it. Just before my wrists a thick strong section of flesh I scraped at the layer. I could feel a slight residue collect under the protrusions at my fingertips. It was coming off not much just a little. Even if just a little it was still working. I pushed harder and scratched faster digging the shards down deeper into the surface peeling it away. The flesh around there as I scratched began to heat up though and the more I clawed at the surface hotter it felt the faster I went the more it burned. But I was making it somewhere.

Unknowingly my hand that was not busy destroying my body worked itself into a fist its own sharp endings digging into the palm. I was absolutely blind to the damage I was causing, for I kept going, pressing harder and faster my heart rate began to soar and it was no longer only my arm that burned. I was too excited to feel the actual pain and my whole body was pulsing as I continued the self mutilation. The heat there changed to pain and the rest of my cool body began to burn. There was an indentation in my arm and getting deeper with every stroke. I kept going taken up in the moment trying to get it off of me that the area was becoming sticky and wet. Some thick liquid was leaking out. It was pooling in bubbles and it rose up through to the surface and with the next stroke each bubble was smeared down my arms and coated each finger tip.

I tried to take deep breaths I had to calm down. Each stroke my hand made became weaker and slower until I stopped completely. There was not much pain than a dull burning at first but as the elation and determination ebbed away a rush of agony took over.

My hands were all sticky and the mess continued to ooze from my arm. The burning pain continued to smolder and grow stronger, the fluids dripped down and around the side of my arm. Excitement was changing to panic I did not know how to make it stop. I covered it with my hand to pull it shut by curling each finger over and squeezing it tight. The pressure I exerted did slow the rapid flow but it put a deep pressure on every bit below that point. The base of my hand throbbed from the inside out. The strain from the pressure made my hand feel to grow and expand. The pressure continued to build forcing more and more into each finger, unraveling each one to curl out of the fist. However, when I released my grip the throbbing did not cease and go away but rather grew stronger. Every bit of me was tense with panic. The affliction had to end, so I grabbed my arm and slammed it into the door.  I would have rather dealt with that pain, any pain other than the tearing agony at the moment. The droplets of water again gathered in my face at the presence of such pain. Both types of burning met at that spot where I pressed it to the door.

The cold itself was not enough to relieve me from the torment. The thick burn changed to a series of scalding stabs that penetrated deeper than the laceration itself. I pressed harder with my good hand to force it harder into the door. Slowly the pains explosion was again replaced with the sense of nothing. As I relaxed, relieved to be free from the torturous pain my arm dropped flopping uselessly to my side. My other hand leaned against the door which no longer seemed so cold due to a coating of the thick fluid dripping in little streams down the doors surface. The door was sticky when I tried to pull my hand away it pulled at my outer layers.

My face felt stiff from the liquid expelled from my face and the tips of my fingers began to feel again. It was already starting with the prickling sensation. I tilted my head down to let my tears fall my hand that was still working I brought to my face hoping to wipe it away. But I noticed something that made me stop in mid motion. There was something there I knew my hand was there of course, I knew where I arm was it was lifted right below my downward cast eyes. There was, it was not as empty as nothing. It was not emptiness. It was brighter than that but still dark. On my hand it was in streaks, streaks and blotches settled into what must have been the creases I felt on my hand before.  I looked over at my other arm the same strange shades left streaks down my arms and left little round orbules hanging off each finger tip. Each streak crossed the others weaving an intricate web of fluids down my arm still dripping away. More and more liquid leaving my body falling into the nothing, on the door the same tone smeared across the face dried out crisp and sticky.

The shades began to blur and I could feel nothingness was starting to take over. My body began to feel cold starting from the bottom of my body, my feet and working its way up. I felt myself falling away. The throbbing grew but was blurred and faint. I knew the pain was there but it was distant and far away. My legs felt wobbly as I stumbled into the wall the sting very faint on my cheek. The shades of color blurred and faded approached by the increasing darkness form the nothing. The anything there grew further and smaller as I fell away from the door, away from hope away from pain. My eyes closed still sticky with the bitter tangy fluids that seeped before one last thing I could feel a dull pulse through my whole body starting where I brutally destroyed my existence.

Time did not feel to pass in such a state; falling away not even my own thoughts could pierce the nothingness. Inside and out I guess I would never be more than nothing. Nothingness was my very being and that was all I would ever be. Back in the nothing movement no longer existed, there were no thoughts to make it happen.

When I finally reawaked there again was only nothingness the same nothingness there always was. But not everything was the same: I was not the same. I had been through pain and sensations that nothingness could never bring. I went to bring my hand to my head in a way expecting the pain to continue. I felt my hand stop but I did not feel its touch. No heat could be felt and to any pressure I was numb. I grabbed where I thought my hand was trying to grab at the loose layer that covered me before. My fingers snapped together but there was nothing there. I reached further and further down trying to grasp anything that was not nothing but nothing could be found. I reached for my arm that was before open and torn nothing. I reached to my eyes looking for anything. No shades no sense of an image even with it right in front of my face.

Could everything I been through been for nothing? Was all that could ever be, be nothing? But if that was true how could the door exist. The door was real it was definitely more than nothing. There was no way around it that THAT door was something; nothing could have held me back or been so cold. It was then when a horrible thought occurred to me: where was the door? Who knows where I could have gone, while I was gone… I could remember it prickling on my cheek just very slight then nothingness took over. I fell backwards away from it and kept going since there was not anything to stop me.

I reached as far as I could, sweeping my arm around my perimeter though I was too far gone to be able to reach it. I tried to make some form of movement. There was no way to tell if I was ever successful; without the door there distance again was a vague ideal. I kept going but the door was nowhere to be found. Who knew how far I drifted or even how long I was out. Without pain and the door and all the strange new sensations distracting me I finally had a chance to only think. That was the only upside to losing my way. There were no distractions in nothing.

Whether my eyes were opened or closed did not matter but I closed them anyways. Unlike before I did not want my mind to be wandering away. Eyes were always windows to the soul to close them was like closing the blinds keeping you safe holding you being together and containing your thoughts.

I already knew the door was more than nothing but what did that make me. At the beginning I was certain nothing was all I was but now I was confused. Could nothing be able to feel? That pain back there was not my imagination I was certain of that. At the end too right on me it was all over me and would not come off. In a way it grew on me or grew too me, grew around me I do not know. And also what kind of nothing would have its own heat, unless it was not me creating the heat but rather my surroundings making it. I could have been only feeling it. A bystander in the way of something grand.

Even if I was not a part of the heat my hand were too well defined each crease was crisp and fit perfectly into the rest. The shards on each finger must have been real too in order to do so much damage, cutting so deep. Both liquids I found in the midst of the pain were real too the sticky mess from my arm I could still feel on the door and when just a droplet from my eyes reached my mouth if that was not real there was no way I could have imagined such a breathtaking sensation. The pricking and stinging it kept coming back in so many senses all of the different pain and chances cam along with some form of sting. The bitter taste in my mouth even prickled. I do not think a nothing could have experienced any of that. It could, maybe, be possible that even though I was made of nothing covered in nothing gave off nothing that I was not just that. I felt everything and I was thinking even with every bit of sensation torn away. In the world I knew, the nothingness was permanent and it seemed that everything that was not nothing was not permanent at all. It all could be stripped away in one moment, my hope to escape; my hope for freedom all relied on it.