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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v099) (the October 2011 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:						This writing also appears in this 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback “Symbols Manifest” Order this 6" x 9" ISBN# book:

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Committed

Elle Pryor

    The knife was so sharp its edge fitted snugly between the looped ridges of Greg’s fingerprints, just a slight touch was all it took to break through the skin. The cut was not deep enough to draw blood though; a tiny crescent of white ectodermic tissue rose above the rest like a wave on the wash. Clenching his fist, he pressed down with the blade onto the taut flesh of his arm. It felt as if he was cutting through the rind of a soft brie cheese. Slowly, blood oozed to the surface, carnelian drizzles trickled leisurely over his wiry arm hair. During these moments, his body seemed like nothing but a haggis, covered with a fine layer of intestines that once ruptured allowed his insides to escape.

    He passed the knife to Debbie and kissed her. With some trepidation she copied him, rigid steel and pliable skin met and she adopted a chopping technique she had learnt while watching chefs prepare food on day time television. Starting from the tip of the slightly curved edge of the blade, she rolled it over her defenseless limb as if she was slicing a crisp cucumber.
    “Too deep, too deep,” Greg said, snatching the knife from her. Debbie stared down in horror at the welt she’d created. While dainty, red rivulets of blood decorated Greg’s forearm, hers was smeared with ugly, misshapen blobs.
    “Wha.. wha.. what should I do?” Debbie stuttered, tensing up so tightly that her mouth momentarily stopped secreting saliva.

    Greg froze, becoming fixated by the sight of her absconding body fluid, but then he suddenly recovered, stood up and pulled her out of his bedroom towards the bathroom. She placed her arm under the faucet of the tap and started to cry. The clear water stung as it touched her sinews, nerves and cells. It mixed with her still flowing blood to form a pink waterfall that revolved like a satellite image of a spinning cyclone as it tumbled into the plughole. The maize colored hypodermic level of her skin had been exposed, the place where her fat had once hidden.

    They both worked in the same call centre, plugged via their headphones into a telephone like two hospital patients connected to an intravenous drip. Throughout the day, they gave the same replies and advice to a line of customers whose voices arrived into their ears after a short warning buzz. Sometimes, Debbie was jolted awake at night when this sound reappeared in her dreams. Separately, they attended a work social event that was organized during Christmas. After drinking copious amounts of half-price happy hour cocktails Greg showed her the rows of scars on his arm,
    “It’s just something to do.” he explained with a casual shrug.

    That evening, she had questioned him about his self harming. The way he described it was so nonchalant and casual as if it was the same as someone biting their nails. So she decided to give it a go. He said it would make her glands produce endorphins and she would experience a natural high. Instead, she was weeping uncontrollably,
    “I want to go to the hospital.” she said in a hushed, broken voice.
    Greg shook his head quickly, “It’s really not a good idea.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “The nurse will probably guess that you cut yourself.” he said; his voice trembling a little.
    She was confused and replied, “So?”
    “They could commit you.” he explained as he ran one anxious palm over his shaved scalp.

    She was shocked by his words, by the suggestion that someone might consider her insane. A few years ago, a friend of hers was committed but her behavior had been bizarre. Jane had been rushed to a psychiatric hospital after climbing up a crane so she could hitch a lift with a spaceship. For months before, she had trained for her new life by bouncing on a small trampoline, believing that when she was suspended in the air she was experiencing weightlessness. Debbie was surprised when she heard the news. People had talked about the odd exercise regime she was following but nobody had assumed that she was mad.

    At first, Jane was distraught to find herself in a hospital instead of on another planet and blamed the foreman who had rung the police for ruining her life. Jane wondered if this was actually the place where the spaceship was landing and whether the series of events that had resulted in her forced admittance was all part of the plan. However, when she was forbidden from exercising, she decided that she must be at the wrong location, the exercise regime was a very important element of the whole process and only her enemies would try and make her stop.

    The messages she’d received from the people wearing denim shirts had been obvious and incontestable until the doctor informed her that the code she was using to decipher their words was a referential delusion. ‘Excuse me’ did not actually mean ‘x marks the spot’, so the crane she had been passing at the time was not a pick up point.
    “But the man who said that was wearing a denim shirt.” she explained. It had all added up, including as well the shopkeeper who informed her that the space ship would arrive in five months when she handed Jane five coins and said,
    “Here’s your change.” There were even hints in the articles she’d read on the internet and once a lark had sung to her that they were looking forward to her arrival.
    “The bird was not singing to you, that was an auditory hallucination.” the doctor replied.

    Sometimes, she was certain that he was wrong and that instead she had attained a higher level of consciousness and was able to sense things that other people couldn’t. Not everything could be explained by science she thought to herself, the big bang theory was just a theory and it could never be absolutely proven. Her denial that she was sick, the psychiatrist informed her, was also a symptom of her illness.

    His medical jargon blurred into a meandering babble at times and she stopped listening and remembered how free and content she’d felt when she climbed up the crane’s ladder. It had been a hot day and by the time she reached the top she was sweating heavily, the view had been wonderful, she could see the undulating, sage hills that surrounded the town in the distance and a seagull flew by, glancing at her as it passed as if to encourage her on her way.
    “You’ve never met any of the people who helped me, so how can you be so sure it was my imagination?” she said resentfully.
    “No one helped you.” The doctor said impatiently.

    She told the doctor about her many enemies,
    “They shouted insults at me.” she answered.
    “Did you meet them?” he asked, suddenly leaning forward in his chair and smiling as if she had said something important.
    “No, they were far away, that’s why the people wearing the denim shirts were helping me escape.” She stared at him; he said nothing for a long time while he wrote in a notebook. Later, she thought about what she had said and his silence. She remembered that a woman had insulted her again the day before, she recognized the voice but this was not really possible because she was living somewhere else now. It was then that she began to wonder whether this voice was real. Something in her head seemed to relax as if a muscle in her brain had been pumping iron repeatedly and was now exhausted. She did not hear the woman’s shrill, hostile voice again.

    Debbie slowly took her arm away from the tap and grasped a few sheets of toilet tissue in order to catch the nasal mucous meandering down the shallow of her philtrum.
    “I’ll say it was an accident.” she said.
    “That might work.” Greg paused, “My tattooist Sid cut himself too deeply once with a razor and said someone tried to mug him.”
    “I could say that.” she said hopefully between sobs.
    He paused and considered this for a moment,
    “Maybe, you don’t have any other scars.” Greg peeled off his white T shirt and used it to carefully wipe the water from her arm. He then wrapped it around her cut; he pressed downwards and she winced with pain,
    “Sorry,” he said anxiously and he reduced the pressure, “this will help the bleeding.”
    The material soaked up the blood like litmus paper, the color dissipating from crimson to salmon.

    Glancing at Greg’s watch, Debbie realized that she had been bleeding for nearly ten minutes.
    “What happened to the tattooist?” she asked, sniffing.
    “He was committed,” he replied, carefully avoiding her eyes, “and given electrotherapy.”
    “For just cutting himself?” she queried with disbelief.
    “Yep,” his voice grew hoarse, “they gave him tiny shocks until he answered the doctor’s questions correctly.” Her fear was escalating and she pictured herself lying on a stone slab, bound with leather straps, convulsing wildly, as watts of voltage were pumped through her body. Sid’s ECT sessions had actually been far less dramatic. The anesthesia administered before by the nurse relaxed him completely and his muscles had only twitched slightly.

    At the hospital after they had seen his scars, they bundled him into an ambulance and drove him to the psychiatric unit. After a few sessions with a psychiatrist, they diagnosed him with severe depression. This was despite the fact that in the real world he had a steady job and was rarely sick. He was thin anyway but the shock of having his life stolen destroyed his appetite. When his girlfriend left him, he lost about twenty eight pounds in weight. Nobody had called Sid crazy then; they were just sympathetic and tried to revitalize him by arranging evenings of drinking in bars populated by plenty of friendly, single women. The nurses were concerned though, worried by the untouched meals and his reticence.

    When he sat on the bed before his first ECT session, tears welled up in his eyes, for some reason he thought about his ex and remembered when they had lain in bed together, she with her arms around him complaining about his long hair tickling her face. Afterwards, it felt like his brain had been rearranged and the reason why he couldn’t eat moved to another place as if a picture in his head had been divided into squares and scrambled. Even though the first had removed his inability to eat, he had to be administered six more electro therapy sessions. His anger grew at being treated like some kind of psychopath, forced to have ECT in a place that seemed like nothing but a prison for people who were not normal enough. He was told that his hostility was caused by his depression and that he had turned this anger on himself when he repeatedly cut himself. He decided they were all idiots and ignored the doctors as much as he could. His contempt earned him a year on the psychiatric ward.

    Debbie moved Greg’s hand and slowly unwrapped the T-shirt hoping that the cut had stopped bleeding. She wanted to leave and never come back; she couldn’t remember ever having such a terrible time. Breathing with some difficulty, Debbie removed the last layer and stared at her arm nervously,
    “Its stopped.” she exclaimed.
    “Yes, the blood is starting to clot.” and he clapped his hands and smiled, put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the lips; she giggled.
    “I have some plasters and antiseptic lotion in the bedroom.” he said tenderly, rubbing her cheek.
    “Ok,” she replied, sighing with relief.

    As they walked down the hallway towards his bedroom she put her arms around his bare torso. Several tattoos on his chest moved when his muscles tensed and she rested her head on the razor sharp talons of a scarlet dragon; his body covered with pitted scales. The piercing yellow eyes of the monster looked down at her and for a second she thought that she saw them blink.

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