Coming Undone by Terri White

Author:Terri White [Terri White]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 2020-04-13T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Squatting within the shadows in the darkest corners of the city, I start to cut myself again. I don’t remember the pebbly path of consideration, the thoughts and questions that would count as such. Or is it simply that my hands just picked up the blade – naturally, easily – without conscious, never mind careful thought? What day was it when thought became action and I carved myself up again? Though it will have been night. Deep night, the exact midpoint between the sun sinking and rising again. Of that I’m sure.

Did I ever stop? Really? If not physically still hunched over, belly over hips, as I opened up my own body until it was bloody, was I still there in my mind? Each period of time without its existence was a brief respite for my skin. A chance to refill. Little more than a chance for my blood to collect and pool inside me, ready to spill out when the silver sharp edge returned.

It might have been a while – how long? – but starting again is like breathing, sleeping. I know where to start, where to pick up where I left off – where I always do high and hidden. The tops of my arms, close to my shoulders while still being covered. The tops, the insides of my thighs. As things become worse, my aim becomes less precise, falls lower, sinks with speed and bursts out into plain sight. I slash at the inside of my arms, my wrists, my hands; then my neck and, for the first time, my face. The high pitch of pain runs through my bones until they rattle. I can’t keep it inside and, once the surface is broken, it spills around my edges.

I develop a toolkit of increasing variety, the biggest addition lent by the professional chef’s knives in the kitchen of my sublet. The rack of blades, pinned to wire on the wall, are of different shapes, sizes and sharpness. My eye trips over them as I step inside, causing a surge in my heart. I gaze at the knives, smitten, hypnotised by the light streaming across, bouncing off the blades. I’m in love, or, at least, lust.

I’d used knives before: knives that weren’t sharp, had been cheap many years before, could barely make it through the outer skin of a small brown onion. How could I expect them to break and butcher human skin, my skin? Hard pulls of the serrated blade across my arm produced little blood – as I released it, tiny specks, like ink falling from the end of a fountain pen appeared on my skin. Faster, harder pulls have little more success, as does sawing, like through French bread, dry and flaking out of the oven. Each knife is filed inside my mind, sitting neatly alongside the razors that have been there a while.

I began with disposable razors but by now I’ve discovered, somewhat gleefully, that a razor blade out of the plastic works better.

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