I’m leaking again, and it’s just as annoying as the last fucking time. Harvey had to tell me there was blood on my shirt because I didn’t even notice at first. So now I’m standing in the bathroom rewrapping my bandages while he waits outside as usual.
He offered to help, of course, but I don’t need help. As frustrating as it is, I usually like this being my own little ritual where I can just dissemble and breathe freely. It’s less enjoyable when I’ve ruined another shirt and I’m getting fluids all over the sink.
He started keeping extra bandages here once we got together. A sweet gesture, and the first one that told me he might actually be worth keeping around. They’re nice bandages too, a roll of quality gauze. Damn shame I can’t use ’em more often.
Once I get my insides back in place and finish washing my shirt off, I return to him and sit back down on his bed, topless but for the bandages around my abdomen. He’s trying not to stare.
Let me take you back for a moment. Picture this: you’re a sickly little teenager and you’re in to get your appendix out. But after it’s done and you’re in the hospital bed with an IV in your arm, the nurse comes by and says the doctor sent her in to do some “post-operative care”. So you remove your blanket and let her see the bandages around your waist, and you wait.
She’s towering above you. Then, she reaches down and unwraps your bandages and she braces her fingers against the stitches and rubs over them and then she rips them open and shoves her hands into your guts and and you’re too shocked to do anything but cry and she’s tearing you apart and she looks disgusted the entire time she’s doing it and when she’s done she steps back covered in blood and she says there’s nothing wrong you’re healing okay and all you can do is stare at the crimson red on her gloves, shiny and beautiful and nauseating and horrible. There’s red and purple and brown sticking out of you. She rewraps the bandages, but she does not stitch you up. A week from then, you’re leaking black and dark red, clotted and sticky. The wound never closes.
I used to be pretty bitter about it, I guess. I was irreparably broken in the span of a couple minutes, and I haven’t been okay since. But it serves as a mark of sorts, something to show that I’m stronger than the rest. I’m in constant pain and I’m still kicking, so what the fuck are you doing?
I didn’t bother trying to hide the thing. My parents weren’t around enough to notice. Everyone else got scared and I liked that. The smell of blood is a distinct one, and everyone hides from it but me. Sweet warm metal in my body, keeping me alive, leaking so beautifully so I can see it work.
Harvey, the freak he is, is fucking enamored with it. He’s got a morbid fascination with the thing, always staring at it, asking if he can touch it or dip his fingers in it or whatever. Before our current arrangement, I knew him as “the weirdo”. Pale, stringy, and he’s always moved like a marionette. He got picked on in elementary and kind of just kept to himself since then, sitting away from others and observing like some kind of alien. Weirdly cute, but I never bothered with him until everyone else got scared of me, and then suddenly he was the one person who never looked away when I started probing my wound in public.
So I went up to him one day and told him I was really interested in sex and no one else wanted it with me, so did he? Naturally he declined. I didn’t care until he explained why: he was scared that he’d break me. And then I was furious and he was suddenly interested too. I took him home that day and devoured him, showed him exactly how fucking durable I am.
Only sex, though. No kissing, no holding hands. We’ve been doing this since then.
I like what he does to me. He learned quickly to be rough because the pain makes me feel powerful. It reminds me that I’m still fucking alive and no one can take that from me but me.
So as I was saying, we’re sitting there on his dumb creaky little bed in his shitty little apartment. His mom is passed out from all the shitty beer she won’t stop drinking, and his dad’s been gone forever, so we have nothing to worry about. His room is barren and sad and baby blue, spiders in the corner and textbooks on an otherwise-empty metal desk, but I can feel the warmth coming off of his body, and it makes the hollow ache in my chest a little less painful. His eyes stay fixed on me as I mess with my bandages some more.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say. Then, “My eyes are up here, perv.”
He shrugs. “Do you care?”
“Nope.” I lean back and let him admire the bandages. Or my tits. Can’t tell exactly. And I feel that hollow ache grow a little as I look at him, and I say, quieter, “I want you to keep looking at me like this.”
“Okay,” he says in the same voice you’d use to describe the weather.
I feel daring all of a sudden, emboldened by his response. He doesn’t mind it, and it hurts less when I’m with him. He likes this, he likes me. It makes sense, right? There’s no way he’ll say no. “Harvey, I want to be a real couple with you.”
He looks up at my face and tilts his head, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. His eyes are dishwater blue and glassy, charming in their own way. I know that he doesn’t like eye contact, but I can still look at him, so it’s fine. I touch his hand, and he flinches, then settles into my touch. I observe the contrast between his sickly pale white and my sallow brown. Then I lean in and wait for him to lean in too, then his lips are on mine. It’s my first kiss.
His lips are chapped but warm. They send an electric rush down my spine that leaves heat in its place. I feel like I’m going to die if he stops, and I panic a little and grab his shoulders, pin him down onto his bed. He’s willing as always, kissing back and holding me, just hugging me.
I feel loved. It turns me on, but I can’t ruin the moment by asking him for sex. So I just keep kissing him until we’re forced to part for breath. He keeps holding me. It feels good.
In school the next day, I end up passing him on the way to his next class, and he stops me, holds my shoulders, looks me in the eyes, and says, “I think I’m in love with you.” In a blink, he’s gone.
I’m combusting in the hallway. I can barely breathe. My head feels hot and wrong. I feel like I’m dying and I just want more.
I should say those same words to him, but I can’t. The last time I felt this much adrenaline was when she was ripping me apart, but I actually like this. I feel sick when I think about it, but I want to feel sick over this.
After school, I head straight to his place and reach his room before he does because the place is always unlocked. When he walks in, I stride over to him and kiss him senseless, learn the intricacies of tongues and teeth, and all the while he’s caressing my face and my hip like he actually cares about me, like I matter more than my damage for the first time since the incident.
Things escalate to sex. He fucks me like I’m… his girlfriend, which I guess I am now. Gentle, or whatever. Holding hands. I don’t even have the heart to insult him about it. He does not touch my wound. I do not touch it either. But then he shifts and I cry out in pain, so I look down and I’m oozing red from my neglected wound. I am suddenly ashamed, but I do my best to ignore it and focus on his breathing.
“Are you okay?” he asks between heavy breaths.
“Yes. Shut up.”
He nods and keeps going.
When we’re done, I make an excuse to leave. I get home and head straight into my own room (an ode to a me who no longer exists, dusty posters of bands I used to like and games I used to play) and sit down on the bed, take my shirt off, run my fingers over the bandages and unwind them. It leaks red. I want to kill it.
I probe the gash as normal and pain radiates outward. But as my fingers slip inside, they feel foreign and wrong and bad and I want to fucking destroy it and everything related to it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. It shouldn’t have happened. Why did it happen? Why do I have to be in so much pain all the time?
I want to stab the damn thing. I want to undo it all. I want to be okay. For once, I want to be okay. It’s a fuckin’ revelation.
So… I stop poking around. I stitch it all up and get fresh bandages and hide it away again. I lie down and bury my face in my pillow and let my mind wander back to Harvey. I’m daydreaming about him like I’m a goddamned schoolgirl, which I would normally view as being pathetic as fuck but for some reason I don’t mind anymore. I don’t know. It is what it is, I guess.
Days pass. I start walking home with him, and today is no exception. As we enter his room, my fingers play over my shirt where the wound is, but I stop myself from pushing any deeper.
He picks up some some string and starts playing with it, twisting it this way and that and getting his fingers stuck and unstuck in it, and I’m just watching. His eyes flit anywhere except my gaze, but suddenly I want to see what he sees when he sees me. So I reach out to caress his jaw and I run my thumb over his gaunt cheekbone, then I tilt his face so he’s looking at me. He blushes bright pink, and I’m lovestruck again.
As soon as I let go, his head jerks away and he goes back to looking at his string, and it hits like a betrayal even though that makes no sense. I am vulnerable suddenly. Childish, hurt, damaged.
“Harvey?” I ask.
He doesn’t respond, but he meets my gaze and then drops it. It’s his form of acknowledgement.
“You want to know how I got this wound?”
His eyes flicker down to my clothed abdomen, then back up to my eyes, then away again. He puts the string down. “Okay.”
I put on as much bravado as I can, but it quickly slips away. “I was fourteen. Went to the hospital. Got ripped apart.” His eyebrows furrow, and I decide to continue. “They sent a nurse in and she tore me to pieces. I don’t know why she did it. I don’t know why it happened.”
“Tore you apart?”
“She dug into my guts with her bare fucking hands. I don’t know why. I’m never going to know why.”
He seems to chew on this. “That’s bad.”
“Yeah. Before that, I was fine, but it just—” My voice breaks.
I try and fail to compose myself, and the only sounds are the creak of his bed and my sniffling. I scoot over to him and I lean against him and I cry. He puts an arm around me, warm and twitchy, uniquely his. We don’t speak.
The next day, I decide to start dragging him out on actual dates. The first one will be simple: a longer walk around the block before we head back to his place. The breeze is nice, but he looks even nicer. He’s even paler in the autumn sunlight, skin just translucent enough that I can see the blue veins in his jaw.
When we’re back at his house, we sit on his bed. It’s warm, calm and comfortable. I reach for his face, but he grabs my hand midway.
“I don’t really like it when you do that,” he says.
“Aw, come on, you’re cute when you blush.”
“You’ve been wanting too much from me,” he blurts.
I blink. Where is this coming from? What am I even supposed to say to that? “What makes you say that?”
“You just, we got together and suddenly you just started doing all these things…”
“What?”
“You keep telling me stuff and you keep making me look at you and–”
“And what?” I sit back and draw one knee up, put my other leg out so it’s swinging over his bed. “Come on, Harv.” I keep my voice even.
“You just want too much out of me!” he exclaims. I don’t think he’s ever raised his voice before, and I fire up to meet it.
“I gave you all of myself. I let you root around inside my body all the time. I let you in me all the fucking time and somehow I’m the one asking too much of you?”
“I just— I feel like—”
“Like what?”
And he actually sits back and curls up like a fucking mental patient, knees up to his chest, face buried in them. “I don’t like feeling that way. Like you’re eating me up inside. Like you want everything.”
“Why not? That’s the best part.”
“I just don’t!” He put his hands in his hair and tugs on it, lets go, tugs on it again.
Okay, I need to take this slow and easy. I lean in and grab his hand, which as always is warmer than mine. “Hey. Harvey.”
“What.”
“It’s okay, okay? I just like seeing you. I like seeing you vulnerable.”
“I don’t want that.”
“I mean, okay. But come on. That’s what we do, right? We peel off the outside and look in at each other. It’s romantic, right?”
He looks away, and his nose crinkles. I’m distracted by how defenseless he looks, but I have to stay focused.
“I just mean that I get to see a side of you others don’t see. I like being the only one who gets to see that. The side that’s shy and embarrassed… the side that likes me.” I curl up next to him, press my body against his and put an arm around him. “The side that I like most, because it’s just for me. You get it, right?”
“I guess so.”
“I’ve let you see my insides a thousand times over. Why can’t I see yours sometimes?”
He seems to struggle with this. His jaw sets, his eyebrows furrow. But I guess he can’t find a good argument against it because he eventually sighs and lets his knees drop, leans back, and glances at me once.
I insert myself under his arm. “Good.”
After a moment, he curls it around me and pulls me closer. I feel sick, but right now we’re okay.
We have a good few days. We make casual talk in school. We don’t discuss the argument. I think I pushed him way too fast, so I try to play it cool for now.
On Thursday, he lets me take him out on another walk, and I admire the way the October sunlight reflects on his pale skin, the way the dying trees frame him. And he glances at me and back to the sidewalk and says, “I shouldn’t have to be responsible for you.”
“You’re not,” I say.
“You act like I have to be the one who’s responsible for it. Like because you’re messed up I have to be the one to help.”
“So? Relationships are about give and take, right?”
“But this isn’t that,” he says. “This isn’t— I don’t like how you treat me. I don’t like it.”
“And how do I treat you?”
“Like I have to be the one to help, because no one else will.”
I stop walking. I’m staring straight ahead at the sidewalk. “Well, it’s true,” I say quietly. “No one else will help me or care about me. Is it so wrong to rely on you?”
“I mean— no, but…” he trails off.
“But what?”
“Nothing.” He’s staring straight ahead.
“It’s not nothing. You’re a shit liar, you know that?”
He mumbles something.
“Louder,” I say. How annoying. “Use your words, Harvey. Come the fuck on.”
“But you’re just using me. I don’t think you mean to, but—”
“Well fuck you too.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Sure you didn’t. Fuck you too. And while we’re here, why don’t we just break up? If you don’t want to be with me, then you’re just like everyone else. If you don’t want to help me, then you don’t love me. No one does, right?” The words are coming out and I’m on fire and I’m burning. My stomach is bloody again, leaking out, warm and rapidly cooling into a sickly ooze. I laugh a cold laugh. “No one fucking loves me. I was stupid to think you would.”
His eyes finally meet mine, and he looks wild and pained, pathetic tears leaking down his stupid face. He runs.
I hate him. I love him. I follow him. I run after him because I don’t know what else to do, but I can’t run fast enough. The shock each time my feet slam the pavement jostles my insides. My shirt is getting wet, and I know the blood must be spurting out.
He turns a corner and makes a dash for his house, slips inside and slams the front door. I careen towards his door and slam my fists into it, gasping for breath. I finally stop and look down, take inventory. I feel faint, my shirt is soaked in blood, and I can feel something poking out, probably an intestine but I don’t really need to know right now because I’m not dying yet and this is more urgent. I try the knob— he’s locked it, so I knock.
“Harvey. Harvey. I’m bleeding, I need to come inside.” It’s a guilt trip and I know it, but what else am I supposed to do?
“Go away,” he says. His voice is shaking and he’s panting for breath, but at least he’s still there.
“Come on, Harvey. You can’t just leave me out here. I’m losing blood, I think I’m going to pass out.” It’s not a lie.
“Just leave,” he says.
“Please? We can talk about this. I’m sorry. I can do better, I just, I got mad, I shouldn’t have yelled, it was a mistake. We need to talk about this.” My voice breaks. “Please.”
He cracks the door open, door chain still locked. Looks me up and down. Then he closes it again and I hear the locks clicking.
A tense moment later, he opens it up fully and nods.
I go to the bathroom and survey the damage. Looks like I was right about the intestine sticking out, but it’s worse than that. There’s more black than red, a clear sign of infection. Fuck, I’ll just disinfect it, I don’t even care right now. I rearrange my guts as best as I can and then I clean up the blood spills, disinfect the counter, pour some isopropyl in and hiss at the pain, and bandage my abdomen.
I made a mistake, that’s for sure. He’s being an asshole, but I can’t lose him. So then… I’ll open up quiet. I can’t mess this up.
I wash my hands and lurch out, unsteady from blood loss or fear, I don’t know which. He’s standing there in front of the door, staring at me with mania in his eyes. Has he been here the whole time?
I open my eyes, but before I can speak, he says, “We should break up.”
I want to vomit. “No.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore. I can’t keep doing this.” He’s caught his breath, and his voice is much more calm. Robotic.
“Please.” I feel sick.
“I care about you, but I can’t do this.”
“Please.” I feel dizzy.
“I’m sorry.”
“I can change. I won’t say things like that again. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not about you yelling at me.” He tilts his head to the side and stares at me, eyes fixed on mine. “It’s everything else.”
“But I love you.”
“But you don’t. You only want me so I can make you feel better, you don’t want me. I’m the only one you have. You don’t have a choice.”
“Harvey, please—”
“Please just go.”
I am infected. I am infection. I am pestilence and disease. I bite my tongue, and the stench of sweet carrion-rot blossoms through my dry mouth and nose. Fresh blood. It tastes like salt, not copper, and I wonder if it’s black like my guts. My chest feels empty and full at the same time, black rage in me, begging for me to scream. This was bound to happen eventually. People like me don’t get to be happy.
I shove my hand into the wound as deep as it can go, and the last thing I see before I collapse is the horror on his face.
Maheen Majid is a writer from the American Midwest, and she is an editorial assistant for Ninth Letter‘s 2023 online publication. She is haunted by the macabre in all forms. When she isn’t writing, she’s usually reading speculative fiction, singing, or playing video games.
Website: maheen-writes.tumblr.com
Idle Ink 