"You're bleeding."
No shit, Sherlock. I can't even snap out of it enough to pull down my sleeves, much less speak.
He vanishes, the blanket sealing behind him,
and returns a few moments later with a bundle of toilet paper. It gives me time to reset myself.
"I'm fine," I say. "I don't need that. It's not
that much blood. My sleeves'll absorb it." I can almost hear his eyebrow raising at me.
"Look," I say before he can speak. "I've been doing this for a while. I don't need you to treat me like a wounded soldier. I know what I'm doing." My arms are still hanging out of their sleeves, bare, exposed. All the criss-crossed, desperate scars. It's my secret code, and he's reading it like a book.
"Sure," he says. But he keeps holding out the toilet paper anyway, like an NPC who won't leave me alone until I click through all the dialogue boxes.
The #WIPsnips word for today is #absorb. It only shows up once in my draft so far. Red catches Cainen self harming. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.
#wip #writing #queer #selfharm #sh #ya #trans #mentalillness #writesky #horror