Title: Release
Author: Love In Vein
Summary: A short piece I wrote for my creative writing class. My professor loved it so I thought I'd post it here. A young woman is driven to the edge of sanity and loses all hope. Very dark/angst piece. Pretty short. Might expand on it sometime (more backstory, etc.)
A/N: Zila (pronounced Zee-la) means shadow in Hebrew. I thought it fit pretty well. You decide what happens to her in the end, I left it open.

Release

"Never get away. Mine."

Zila closed the heavy oak door against the cold November wind and leaned heavily against it. She took several deep breaths to calm her frazzled nerves. Her pale, shaking hands smoothed the knee-length, plaid, pleated skirt that he so loved for her to wear and rested lightly on her bare knees.

"Mom? Lucy?" she called and was met with a cathedral-like silence.

She closed her eyes and silently thanked her non-existent deity that they weren’t home. No need for explanations, no need for suffocating sympathy. This was her deal, her life. She knew that now. She straightened up and lightly ran her fingers along the neat, white scars that decorated her forearms and the edges of her wrists. So many, too many to count, much less remember how and when they all came to be. And yet, even as that thought flitted through her short-circuited brain, images came. Images of blood and knives and silk and sweet smelling lavender. The cruel torture and the crueler still tenderness that made the scars throb with those memories.

With a quick shake of her head to dislodge those painful thoughts, she began to slowly shuffle down the maroon (blood) carpeted hallway. Her thin fingers caught a petal of one of the garish silk flowers that sat on glass pedestals on either side of the hallway and she briefed toyed with the idea of bringing the flowers and the pedestal crashing to the ground. The large family portrait, so glossy and happy and full of strange, foreign memories stared down at her with a look of disappointment. Quickly averting her eyes, she rounded the corner to the left and ducked into the bathroom.

She quickly shut the door and crossed to the sink, leaning her hands against the smooth marble countertop. Peering at her reflection, she winced visibly at what she saw. A girl of no more than 17, pale and tired looking, with dull, green eyes that held a haunted look. Had he really done this to her? She vaguely recalled the fire those eyes once held, the pink life that used to flush her cheeks. And now, nothing but a shell, a limp marionette that danced on tightly controlled strings.

Just as well, then, that this would be the end.

Calmly she opened the medicine cabinet and took out a small, blue plastic box that had been carefully hidden behind bottles of hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol. She flipped open the lid and carefully lifted out a shiny metal box-cutter, clean and new and never used. Laying the box and razor on the counter, she slowly unbuttoned her short-sleeved, white blouse and hung it on the doorknob then slipped her skirt over her hips and allowed it to drop to the floor.

Standing in front of the fully lighted vanity mirror, what was usually mercifully covered was now plainly visible to her pain-darkened eyes. Her slight frame was covered with scars. Not the clean, straight cuts that peppered her arms, no, these had the look of bites. Savage bites with needle sharp fangs. The deepest bite lay just in the crook of her neck. A marking, a claim. A trap, really, tighter than iron shackles which could never be escaped.

She lifted the knife to her soft smooth wrist, then shook her head and laid the razor back down. ‘First things first,’ she thought. Her hair was still in his favorite style, high little girl pigtails. She reached up and yanked the rubber bands out of her hair, enjoying the jolt of pain that shot through her scalp. Her hair now hung in loose, dark blonde waves.

Taking the razor back into her hand, she looked at her wrists and frowned. Too quick, too simple. Furrowing her sharply sculpted eyebrows, she ran her hands down to her hips and a macabre smiled graced her lips. She drew the razor deep across her left hip, a gasp of pain escaping her lips. One, two, three more deep cuts joined the first as blood now flowed freely from the wounds. She turned her attention towards her right hip now and made four identical cuts into that skin, her head swimming slightly with pain and blood loss.

The deep red liquid slid with urgency down her thighs, coursing wildly in its own tumultuous paths and landing with a drip, splash on the white tiled floor.

‘Too slow,’ she thought faintly and made a harsh cut in her left wrist. She leaned heavily on the counter, then on the white, soft toilet seat cover, her hands leaving childishly small red handprints on each surface.

It is said that towards the end your life flashes before your eyes. For Zila it was not so. All she saw was him. His darkly erotic smile in a faintly lit club. The smoldering rage that lay deep within his eyes. The pain he inflicted with utter glee. The word ‘mine,’ whispered viciously against her neck, her hair, her lips.

Zila drew a ragged breath and pitched forward, landing face down on the cold, hard tiles, barely missing the rim of the gleaming white bathtub. Her hair hung over her face, and blood pooled around her body and still seeped slowly from her self-inflicted wounds. Her eyes were closed and the ticking of some faraway clock were all that could be heard.

Seconds ticked away, birds chirped, a faint breeze rustled leaves just outside.

Then Zila’s eyes opened.

"Never get away. Mine."