I run a bleeding finger over the scars on my body, softly counting them out loud and naming their sources. Kitchen knife, curling iron, stovetop, letter opener, CD that was snapped in half, fingernails. Then the bruises. Fists, steel-toed boot, encyclopedia, can of green beans, beer bottle, the butt of a gun. I know where all of them came from as if I’d inflicted them myself, even the ones I can’t see, on my back, on my neck, on my face.

The room is small, not really a room at all. A closet, illuminated only by a dim light bulb hanging from the ceiling by a fraying piece of rope. There is no furniture, not even a tiny item to call my own. I am kept company by dust, cobwebs, and the corpses of the spiders’ victims. The hard cement floor is so covered in bloodstains that the gray color is almost completely obscured.

Instead of clothes, I wear a dirty cloth sack with holes for my head and arms. My body is so thin that I can see my own bones through my skin. Sometimes I watch the blood veins pulsing and wonder if I want it badly enough, would it cease to flow inside me?

Maybe this is just a dream. Some twisted nightmare brought on by too many horror movies and angst-filled poems.

Oh, God, if this is a dream, then please, let someone wake me up.