SPOILER ALERTS AND CONTENT WARNINGS!

Self-Harm, Torture, Sexual Assault

I have headphones on while I stand at the bus stop. No music, just static loud enough to keep me from thinking. A man tries to talk to me as we wait. I ignore him, but my impulse to lie has me digging my key into my wrist. If I tell the man I can’t talk, I’d stop being able to speak. The key breaks skin and pain floods my brain. I don’t think while I bleed, thank God. 

The man keeps talking despite my silence.

“Did you see the reroute? Sinkhole was pretty bad. They’ll probably find another one of those freaks around here,” he says. “We’re lucky no one died.” 

I now dig a fingernail into the opposite hand, even more blood. Better. I make the static louder in my ears and follow him onto the bus. 

We pass under trees half-way in and half-way out of the massive sinkhole. It’s large enough to have taken homes, cars, and a church billboard that says Repent. I don’t think I made this sinkhole, but I don’t know for sure. Scarred skin covers most of my arms and legs. I can’t keep track anymore. I’d like to think I might have taken out the church too, rather than just the billboard. 

Church was good for the first few years. It was a much-needed morality thermometer. I had some success putting my thoughts in the hands of Jesus or God or whoever. The issue was that it gave me a line to never cross, and enough silence that I couldn’t help myself.  

What if I killed God?

I’m not really sure that anyone at church could tell the difference with or without Him. God had long abandoned us. But yeah, sorry about that, God is dead and I killed him. I killed him because my thoughts come true and I can’t stop thinking bad things. Or maybe he wasn’t real in the first place. No way to know. 

Before we get to my stop by the hospital, there is a wall with the impression of a human body, an inverted shadow made of ash, the last remnant of a life and the fire that took it. Just above the outline is the spray-painted word “DIE.” This is my reminder to pull the cord for the bus driver.

What if he can’t die?

The hospital is the tallest building on this edge of the city, forty stories and bright white. I get off the bus in front of it. I’ve been here too many times before. I will my thoughts to work for me, to allow me into the hospital unbothered, and to make the security cameras ignore my presence. They do what I want, sometimes. 

In his room, I take the pocket knife out of my bra and extend it. The blade is small but sharp enough to tear through skin. It’s quick. I dig into the edge of his neck and start a small trickle of blood into the white sheets beneath him. It’s the next motion that takes a bit of muscle, yanking the knife across his throat. 

The machines monitoring his breathing and heart rate start to go off. 

What if I’m completely invisible?

This is the third time I’ve done it. 

Doctors and nurses run into the room to stop the bleeding. Blood is everywhere, spilling onto the floor, and coating everyone in the room.

What if he survives?

I don’t bleed for him. I won’t mix sacrificial offerings, not again. I can’t fight against the thought anymore than I could the first time. I watch the broken edges of his skin slowly come back together. Like a bug caught in the carnivorous mouth of a fly trap, the wound closes on its own. 

What if he gets away with it?

There isn’t a lot of distance between him surviving and him getting away with what he did to me. Exactly how much blood do I need to satiate that one thought? What about the stained chair and the trail of red from the office to the bathroom? Why wasn’t that enough to make me good? I’d already bled enough for everyone else. Why couldn’t I stop it now?

The doctors work to get him stable and I know they will—they have before. 

“God, I wonder if one of those mind freaks is trying to kill him,” the doctor says. “That’s the third time I’ve had to resuscitate this guy.” 

“I wish they’d use their powers for good and help out in the pediatrics wing or something,” the nurse replies.

It was the first thought I could remember, before I learned how much my blood was worth, an inkling at the base of my neck that asked— 

What if I’m evil?

And the church said that I could repent and that I could undo all this, that there had been someone so good that his death made me pure. They changed out the baptismal water after I used it. 

The priest took me into his office and dripped more holy water over my head, not the one in the sanctuary, his own private store. He cupped my chin and squished my cheeks so he could kiss my lips uninhibited. All of the things that were supposed to make me pure and clean became cloudy and rancid under his holy weight. 

What if I deserve this?

And then, I tried to kill God to see if that would undo that thought and the fungal roots it took to my mind. How clean and pure would I be if God was the one who bled for me? It worked for Jesus, didn’t it? 

I watch the doctor watch the screen. “He’s got a strong heart, that’s for sure.” 

“Well, I think that’s the holy spirit moving through him,” a nurse replies.

“Amen,” another says.

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Hope Nolan is a researcher by trade but enjoys writing fiction in her downtime. She holds a masters degree from the University of Chicago and currently works in criminal legal reform.