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Jessicka

The Crimson Butterfly

Copyright, Jessicka

Normally, words come easy for me. Normally, words flow like water off waterfalls in the amazon. I should have just typed way back then. I shouldn’t have pulled that kitchen knife out of the drawer with the horrid intention of what I was going to do. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

Now to put a feeling that was so intense even I, the one who was experiencing it, the one who fell for her stupid tricks; didn’t even realise was slowly taking me over.

I had a fairly normal childhood. My parents and I lived in a two-bedroom apartment, with my older half-brother of a dramatic ten years. Before I went to school, I was happy. That’s as far back as I can remember, maybe I wasn’t happy at all. But I thought I was.

Like all children, I was set to go to school at the young age of five. I didn’t attend preschool and spent a very long amount of time around my mother before that one day I was separated from her; just into another room while she filled out paperwork. I had a fit. I drifted off into my imaginary play world with imaginary friends from TV and stories and who knows what. I stayed there for a while.

I was made fun of at school; for some reason they thought being short was an immense issue. Now I look back and laugh at how much the bullies’ words hurt me. Now, I would just smirk and bark a witty comeback. But back then, I was so deeply hurt that I just cried and reverted back to my imaginary world. And it was quite an imagination. I had two friends; Jeff, and Richard. Jeff was most likely the one to blame for my supreme addiction to gaming; but, I have to thank him for it. All that creativity in video games probably just sparked the writer within. As for Richard… I no longer speak to him, but we didn’t have a fight. We simply drifted apart after his mother became anal and annoying.

Some time when I was seven, that summer, I was bitten by a deer tick. I never even found the thing, but a few months later I was bed-bound and sleeping most of the day away. I did this for a few weeks, or months; I don’t really remember. But a while later I was in the hospital having some kind of operation to put a tool in my arm that would administer medicine for three months, depleting my summer. I was devastated, since summer was the only time of the year I got away from the cruel children of JFK and got to swim; which I adored. A while later a thought sparked in my mind; I had missed all that schooling because I was sick, why not more?

So I was constantly faking ill to get out of class; I was fatigued with headaches from Lyme, but that was no reason to go home. Being pushed down stairwells were. But by that time; I viewed telling my parents like telling my imaginary friends. Although they would listen, they could do nothing. Little did I know my parents would do things for me.

I was still harassed at school; but I had made a new friend; Brittaney, who was slightly pushy to me, but she was the first real female friend I had ever had. Really.

A couple of years later I had gone out with my parents and Britt; I can’t remember clearly why, but we had gone to a ShopRite last, and more stores before that. There was a full moon high in the sky above us, and Britt and I joked about the popular kids and did what we would later know as role playing — but not the sexual kind. Do some research on it, allow your mind to grow.

That night, when we arrived home, Britt and I were playing with action figures and listening to the latest pop sensation, Avril Lavigne, who I have later come to loathe possibly for this reason. My mother knocked on the door, and I sprung from my seat and opened the door; my mother was in tears, and my father looked nervous and awkward. She left quickly, uttering “I don’t know how to tell her” and leaving my father the dark deed. He announced that my uncle was dead, and I looked around curiously. This was the first time I went back to my imaginary world in a while.

At his funeral, my uncle’s girlfriend appeared; long, chocolate brown hair and delicate hazel eyes. She was friendly and warm; just what I needed in a time of despair when my mother was in a state of shock and I wasn’t at all close to my father at the time. Before I knew it, I was in love with the beautiful Miss Crystal.

We moved down to Florida and into my uncle’s house; Crystal had started dating again and I was crushed. I didn’t know why at the time; or maybe I was really denying it, but it was because when Rob was around she paid no mind to me. I was left to babysit her children from previous marriages and hang around on my own. Back again to my imaginary world.

A while later my mother and her had a humongous fight; leaving me alone and homeschooled. I reverted back to only what I knew; video games. I went through ever game that I had, now incredibly short on money and without a friend in the world. Or at least the state.

One fateful night I was sitting in my room, silently sobbing about the love I had lost and had to pretend to hate. Lamely, I pulled a safety pin from a package and made thin little red lines on my left ankle. Slowly, the lines escalated.

I became depressed with the lost of my first love and became an internet addict; I had started seeing a counsellor at my mothers wished and went through a “slipknot” phase. Luckily those days are over.

Tonight, I sit nervously, breathing deep, at five in the morning trying to convince myself that I’m fine. I’ve decided something very big in my life; this needs to stop. I went from dull kitchen knives to switchblades, to disposable razorblades. I have just gone through a moment of self-injury and was fearing that I would have to reveal to my mother yet again that I was still a self-injurer and had been hiding it from her. Luckily, the wound closed up and has dried. This has to be the last time I bring a razor to my own flesh.

Scars will fade and beauty diminishes; but only one creature is left at the end of the ritual. The Crimson Butterfly.

I have been saying that ever since I played Fatal Frame 2; it just popped into my head once when staring at the trapped boy called Itsuki Tachibana that I so admired.

Unfortunately; that butterfly was crushed in the hand of a devious woman just out for herself. Maybe, that butterfly can heal?

 

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