Demon

*This is not mine, it's from someone who wrote it, not taking credits for it.*

She sits on the bed, chewing on her fingernails. She tries determinedly to focus on homework.

I drift to her side, chuckling to myself. She's a pretty little thing, despite what she thinks. Dark hair frames a soft face with lovely brown eyes.

Eyes that are full of struggle. She tries pouring every ounce of concentration into what would normally take her less than a few seconds. It doesn't work.

Gently I whisper such into her ear.

She bites down hard on her finger accidentally, and shakes her hand out angrily.

"That hurt," she whispers.

"That felt good," I whisper back.

Her troubled eyes dart up. She glances quickly around the room, but misses me. Her eyes rest when she finds the mirror. She studies herself. She sees the same picture I see, with dislike not unlike my own.

Her injured hand slowly comes up to touch her soft hair. She curls it around her fingertips absent-mindedly. Her mind rests on the mystery behind those brown eyes.

"What's wrong in there?" She whispers.

"Quite a bit," I answer back, after a pause.

Taken aback at the thought that just entered her mind, she turns from the mirror.

"How do I fix it?" She wonders aloud.

I nudge her notebook, and it falls to the floor. She reaches down to grab it, and her eyes freeze on the scars that aimlessly tracked their way under her forearm.

She answered her own question.

"Oh, you do remember this, don't you . . ." It was more a statement than question.

I drifted behind her, then around her to her side, watching her examine her arm. I reached out and traced the irregular pattern branded there.

"What were you thinking?" I whisper quietly, almost rebukingly, into her ear.

"What was I thinking?" she asks herself, turning to the mirror again.

She looks long into the lost brown eyes, seeing what she so easily hides from others, when not confronting herself.

Or me.

"Didn't it used to help things?" I ask her.

"It used to help things," She says. "It was a useful escape."

I chuckle. "An escape from what? The perfect family? The perfect friends? The perfect life?"

"What did I need to escape? It was too perfect . . . I couldn't meet their expectations. I couldn't help but . . . disappoint them." She says to herself.

I lay my hand on her forearm. She lays her hand on top of mine, though she took no notice.

She sighs brokenly. I look into the face reflected in the mirror, and a tear falls down her face.

"Crying doesn't help anymore," I say.

"Crying's never helped me any," She says.

But then she was sobbing into her hands.

"It never helped!" She moans.

"You're angry," I say.

"I'm so angry!" She says. "At myself. At people. At God," she spoke angrily, between sobs. "I'm sick of it all!" She says even louder, her head rising from her hands.

"You don't deserve any of this." I got down and kneeled in front of her.

"What did I do to deserve any of this?" She slaps the notebook still in her lap. As if just realizing it was there, I watch her eyes flit down to it. Then she grabs it and flings it hard against the opposite wall.

It crashes into a picture frame sitting innocently on her desk, and sends it shattering against the corner of the desk and tumbling onto the floor.

Isosceles triangles scatter, sharp and threatening.

The broken picture seems to empower her, and I watch amusedly as something like rage turns her pretty face into an ugly mask.

She cries earnestly now, but doesn't collapse into herself. No, I thought, The collapse would come later.

"Look at what you did," I scold softly. "That wasn't smart. That was a little stupid if you ask me."

"That was stupid!" She thinks to herself. "I'm an idiot."

She was mad, and she began pace now. She couldn't keep her hands by her side; one second she throws them up and pulls wildly at her hair, the next they're clenched into white-knuckle, tight-fisted balls, with fingernails digging deep into flesh. Then she has her arms crossed so tightly in front of her chest, she has trouble breathing, and almost doubts that she could uncross them. The next second her fists are flying wildly above her head.

I drift over the broken glass that she barely missed trampling over and over again, and stop in front of where she was tugging wickedly on her hair again.

I grab her fists, and look into her eyes. She stares right through mine, but stops beating herself. She was breathing heavily.

"If you don't calm down, you're going to break something. Or," I lean closer, "hurt yourself."

She stares wildly into my eyes without knowing she was, and I saw my idea, my suggestion, crawl into her mind like salt into a wound.

She doesn't say anything, just tumbles onto the floor. Several emotions flit across her face. Few people would be able to pick each and every one up like I could.

First the rage drained from her eyes. Fear shuffled in. The idea scared her.

"Not again," She whispers.

Fear made room for desperation and hopelessness.

"No.Just.No there's got to be something." She's breathless. ".Someone.that can help this."

"Like who?"

"I wish-God. God will help me right?"

I sneer. "That God of yours? He's too perfect. You know you'd never be good enough for Him." I point to her wrist. "That's why you started that. It's disgusting. You don't really think He'd take you back after what you've done to yourself?"

"No. No. God doesn't want someone who can't even-control herself. And if even God's too good for me, then everyone else is."

Anger shoved its way onto her face.

"You're still mad at yourself," I whisper.

"I'm an idiot," She says. "I'm a failure."

"You're a failure, and it hurts you so bad that you don't even know what to do."

She pauses. "Yes I do."

She glares at herself even as she reaches for a shard of the glass littered a foot away from her.

She was furious. But it was a calm ferocity. It was a helpless, desperate ferocity. With such, she lays the sliver of glass on her forearm, and pierced her skin.

With every gash, a single emotion fades.

Slash.

Fear melts.

Slash.

Desperation vanishes.

Slash.

Hopelessness dissolves.

Slash.

Rejection disappears.

Slash.

Slash.

Slash.

SLASH.

She tries to cut the anger away, but it won't fade. It just won't go away. Each gash only triggers more anger. Anger at herself.

I watch, pleased.

She was weeping. She couldn't afford to try to let go of the anger anymore. Terrified that if she let herself continue, she'd bleed to death, she lays there and cries. The bloody sliver of glass falls out of her hand and drops to the floor.

I stand above her head, and look down.

"That helped, didn't it?"

With a shriek, she snatches glass from the floor and launches it right at me.

The shard pierces thin air, where if I had a heart, it would have hit. I laugh, and vanish.