Sex and Murder Magazine

By Jeff Sinclair

I’d spent three-hundred dollars on razorblades in July alone, a veritable fortune for a girl of seventeen working at the local Food Mart.

Most of them lay in a mound at the bottom of my armoire, but the special ones--the blades that told me secrets--they were the ones that made it to the Bordeaux wine glass. They were the informative ones, the nurturing, supportive ones that told me about the numbness that plagued me, the nature of it, and how to make it go away. A single cut by each blade from the wine glass was all it took, they said. The sting of thirty-seven blades would allow me to feel again.

It was the night of my eighteenth birthday. Ian and Chelsea were doing their military march from room to room, floor to floor again, their shouts a violent tennis match of suspicion and crude insults. My baby sister, Marcela, was happily in her room. I'd done her social studiesso she could play video games, volume pumped up good and loud. The colorful, staccato rhythm of rocket engines and death rays pounded our parents' voices into space dust, defending her ten-year-old mind as Axl Rose whinnied from my own speakers:

She’s got a smile that it seems to me / Reminds me of childhood memories / Where everything was as fresh as the bright blue sky

In the darkness of my fourth-storey bedroom, I sat cross-legged on the window sill, clad only in a red t-shirt. The sill was deep, and I would often do my homework up there, watching the elms that lined the suburban streets below to accommodate my focus. On this blustery summer night in 1996, I watched them intently, witnessing their dryad dance beckoning thunder in the distance.

I held the wine glass and gazed drunkenly within, turning it this way and that, watching as the razorblades churned with moonlight. Seemingly wet with my lifeblood already, they were most assuredly alive, whispering to me. Gradually, new voices were added to the cacophony reverberating throughout my bedroom, and it wasn’t long before they coalesced into one rhythmic chant -- no longer the unique mishmash of comforting sopranos, but a multitude of seething devils hissing and gnashing their teeth at my ear.

They’d become impatient with me.

Ian and Chelsea’s fight had become louder, more violent, and the voices, as if awash in this viscous dark energy, were likewise irritated. I pulled my t-shirt over my head, knotted it around my left wrist, and took up the first razor, fingers trembling. Somewhere down below, my mother swept a stack of dishes to the kitchen floor. Anticipation swelled around me as the devils’ chant became a quiet muffled din. My left arm was a pumping heart unto itself; a great bulging vein.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, / Sweet child o’ mine

The first cut was the shallowest, high on my shoulder. The familiar burn gave way to a series of stings as my lifeblood welled up on the fresh slit, negotiating its way to the sanctity of my red shirt. I stared at the crimson rivulet, a path incessantly renewed by the thin dribbling mouth I’d created.

Chelsea struck Ian, probably across the face. I knew this because she’d gotten louder, the f-words free and scattered like an exploded poisonous cloud. She was belittling him, emasculating him, comparing him to other men she knew, telling him he was just a little boy compared to them. A gutless, dickless, ball-less wonder.

I set the first razor down on the sill and took up a fresh one. The second cut was deeper and hotter, a wave of burning embers winding up along my shoulder blade to the base of my neck. Atta girl, the devils cooed. Atta girl, atta girl.

I held the third razorblade. The tremors had stopped. Ian took another blow to the head, and another, and another, amid fuck-this and fuck-that. My arm glistened with free-flowing ruby red rivers, and now, as I looked down at the boys on the street below, prodding each other and waving at me and beckoning me, pointing at my naked body, I took up each new blade in rapid succession, swiping new slits into existence, God-strokes—each one deeper than the last—along the established railroad path of mutilation. Thirty. Thirty-one. Tears welled up in my eyes. A whimper eluded the white-tight confines of my lips. Thirty-two, thirty-three—you’ll be free, they said. Thirty-four, thirty-five—the numbness subsides.

Thirty-six, thirty-six, destiny transfixed.

Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven.

Lure them with heaven.

I heard the car doors slam. Ian had gotten into his car, and Chelsea into hers, each on a path to redemption through revenge.

I met my prey on the front porch.

I let them in.

She was born this night, the Lioness within.