Red Ink

Prologue

Robin looked down at the large knife in her hands, tilting it to catch the light from the bathroom ceiling. Below her, on the floor, was a well-used towel – she didn’t want to get her mother angry by messing up the floor, did she? Her mother had worked so hard to get the floor clean – so much so that if the young woman looked to an area of the floor beyond the towel, she’d be able to see her reflection in the floor - the reflection of a woman who has had enough and can’t do it anymore. The knife seemed to have a soul of its own as Robin tilted it this way and that way, watching the manner in which the light moved across its clean, unblemished surface. She was amazed at how something that seemed so pure could inflict the pain that she wanted. Would it work?

The suicidal stories she heard involved razors rather than knives, but her father didn’t seem to have any lingering around, so she’d had to make do with one of the large steak knives from the kitchen. She was sure that it would do the job, after all, if something as tiny as a razorblade could end a life, what could a knife like this do? As soon as her fascination with the light on the blade had disappeared, Robin allowed the knife to lean horizontally, resting on the skin of her wrist. This was the way they did it, right? Cut straight through where the veins where on the wrist – making sure that as much blood as possible was lost before someone found them. Well, there would be no trouble with that – her parents had decided to have a night out, after all the trouble they’d had recently with their daughter, and had left her at home alone. The thought of what their daughter may do alone obviously hadn’t even crossed their minds. Did she really mean so little to them?

“We’re disappointed in you, Robin. We thought you were responsible. How could you do this to us?”

“What are people going to think of us now? You’ll be like one of those teen mums we see – living in a dirty council flat, your only income being the benefits that you receive, your child growing up and asking who their father is… what will you tell them, Robin? Will you tell them that he was an irresponsible child who ran away and wanted nothing to do with them?”

“Oh, Robin… we thought we’d raised you well… where did we go wrong?”

Her parents had been so angry at her… but it wasn’t the anger that had caused Robin to become depressed. It was the tears that her mother had cried, it was the waiting in the hospital with her father by her side, and it was the murder she had committed. She had killed her own child – she didn’t deserve to live for that? Why should she live, when she had destroyed the life of another person, just like that?

The knife dug in slightly to Robin’s wrist, and she winced. How pathetic – it was going to hurt a lot more than that when she actually cut into the skin, and she was wincing already? Perhaps the knife could do the job, but could Robin inflict that pain on herself?

She had to… she had to do it – it was her punishment for killing her child. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, before running the knife across her wrist. The stinging pain made her drop the knife and grab her bleeding wrist, breathing heavily as the pain swept through her body. When the pain seemed to have decreased to a dull ache in her wrist, Robin lifted up her hand and looked at her wrist. The blood was already dropping to the towel, ruining it. Robin wasn’t sure whether her mother would be angry at her ruining the towel, but surely it was better than ruining the floor that she had only just cleaned. The gash on Robin’s wrist seemed to throb slightly, as though her heart was just beneath it, trying to get as much blood out as possible. Yes… she deserved this death, she deserved the pain.

With this in mind, she picked up the knife again and placed it a little below the first cut, making the move to drag it over her skin again, this time ready to embrace the pain she knew she would feel…

“Robin? What the hell are you doing?”