Scarred by Nick Stead

For years my soul was a raw and bloody thing, fresh wounds opened every day, fresh torments suffered that far surpassed those of the flesh. Pain that runs deeper than any which nerves could ever transmit, my heart and mind sores never allowed to heal – for the first part of my life, this was all I knew. I was the very epitome of misery and anguish, never to know true happiness, never to know true love. Never to laugh or cry, or know what it is to be human. There was only pain and suffering of the kind that damages, the kind that marks. Until I met her.

She was divine perfection with a heart that held enough love for us both. Every moment spent with her was a drug to subdue the agony at my core, every caress a healing touch, every laugh a salve to soothe the worst of my aches. And gradually the lesions began to close and scar, the pain no longer constant but only an occasional discomfort. She was my angel sent to raise me up out of Hell, and for a time I knew peace.

I am damned, I know that now. What exactly I did to deserve this cruel existence I cannot say – punishment for crimes committed in a past life perhaps? No matter. I am damned, and suffering is all there is. To think any different is foolish, so why did I let myself believe a beauty such as she, so kind and caring and filled with all the pieces my damaged soul lacks, could ever give one such as I a lifetime of paradise? I should have known she was only a temporary reprieve, should have known it could not last. I should have seen it coming when she left me for another.

And alone again, old wounds re-open and bleed anew. Yet the torment is made all the worse for that taste of what life could have been if only she’d stayed, if only her love for me had lasted. So I find myself turning not to some divine being, but to darker forces, for it is surely to them that my soul belongs. I plead for them to bring her back to me, beg for them to grant me the closest I will ever get to paradise, damned or no. And he answers.

“She is nearer than you think. Go to the park.”

Most men would have felt terror to hear such a voice, but I have never been most men. I venture out for the first time in weeks, only to be confronted by a sea of couples enjoying each other’s company on this Valentine’s Day, the sight acting as salt in my open sores. I falter and almost lose the will to go on, until the voice sounds again.

“Go to the park.”

The power that resonates through every word gives me new strength. I do as he says, and the next thing I know I’m feeling that strange jolt in my stomach at the image my eyes are presenting me with, for there she is. Her new man isn’t with her, yet she never once looks over at me as I approach, not even when I say her name. A new cut to my heart.

I’ve almost crossed the distance between us when the blade appears in my hand, a gift from my dark lord. The rest is a blur as I thrust in and out, no longer with the warmth of life but with the cold touch of death, far more fitting for the broken being I am, a freak who has never truly lived but only ever existed. I lose count of the number of times I pierce her flesh, opening the same wounds I must live with until she feels the true extent of my pain, inflicting the same torment she has pushed me back into. And she bleeds enough for us both. As she did last year. As she will again. And for the briefest of moments, I am healed.