She stared harder at her reflection with a frown. Gemma couldn’t remember doing any of it and it’s not exactly like she had company last night. She’d had a couple flirty texts back and forth with Jack, but she got the impression he was more into Priyanka than her. Fair enough, he was a bit young for her anyway. Still, it was fun to have a wee flirt over a glass of wine. Minimal effort. The wine – how much had she had? A couple at the book club, then after? Less than a bottle, surely. But her headache said otherwise.
Gemma’s fingers traced the scratches on her cheek. They itched a bit. That kind of under the skin itch you can’t ever reach. Maybe that’s what she’d done, in her sleep. She’d have to cut her nails. The office would enjoy debating what had happened to her on Monday. Makeup would cover it at least.
The papercut on her finger throbbed more than it should’ve though and she couldn’t help but squeeze it to see if it would bleed. It didn’t. In fact, it barely looked deep at all but the area around it had swollen. No doubt she’d got some sort of rash or infection from that old Penny Dreadful Eileen had dished out. It was a cool idea with Halloween coming up and all, but it was hardly the literature Gemma was expecting when she joined the book club.
She squirmed involuntarily as she dressed; her clothes felt rough on her delicate skin no matter what she put on. Each piece of jagged cloth felt as if it would tear through her; like her skin was fragile, too fragile. Like the thin pages of that Penny Dreadful that sat on her bedside table, staring at her.
She picked it up, leafing through it carefully. It felt familiar, as if she’d read it before. Maybe she had. But more than that. A dull buzz accompanied her headache and she squeezed her eyes shut. The words were still there, plain as they had been a moment ago. But something told her they were wrong. Like they needed correction.
She broke out in a shiver that rippled up between her shoulder blades and across her neck as she opened her eyes.
Her fingers stung with several fresh papercuts. She dropped the Penny Dreadful. The urge to change it built like a growing tower of books around her, threatening to topple and crush her, rip her to shreds if she didn’t fix it.
A whisper behind her eyes gave her the words. She had to rewrite it.
The buzzing continued, willing her to change it, make it right, rewrite it. Rewrite herself. Gemma crumpled to the floor; it still wasn’t right. There were too many mistakes. She tore them out, cut them away. Mistakes would not be tolerated.
She was changing, just like the words she’d carved across her flesh, like the pages she hacked and sliced from herself, they were making her better. But so much space was already wasted on errors, pages ripped from her skin and left in a bloodied mess on the hardwood floor. They were unimportant.
But as she continued to cut and carve, her vision blurred, and her skin thinned. She carried on, until the voice told her it was perfect. Then, it would stop tearing her apart.
Then, she would be complete.
Words, editing & design by N.S.Land
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