[773] A Sick Obsession

crit [2409]: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/s/qmhuq5wyMR

This is a chapter beginning that I wrote on my break at work. I’m not sure if it’s going to go anywhere but I have some ideas brewing for some psychological thriller-y stuff.

story—

It was mid July and the air was thick with suncream and sweat. I was walking to work, weaving through the crowds of people congregated in the city centre, clenching my jaw as the horns of busses and trams blared past me. Hot days like that make me uneasy. I’m not sure if that came on before or after the incident.

I’d reached the Wetherspoons on the corner, letting my muscles unclench as the crowds thinned and the peeling lion portrait that marked my place of employment came into view. Then a man caught my eye.

He sat outside the pub with his football shirt draped over his shoulder, his brown freckled flesh wrinkling around aged nipples. He nursed a pint, and it was clear by the way his head kept bobbing into his chest that it wasn’t his first. I caught his eye too.

I don’t remember much after that. He asked me what I was looking at. I said nothing. Then my face was pressed against the sun-sticky tar mac and his fingers were clawing into the back of my neck.

People were on it immediately. Hordes of them rushing to drag him off me, to save the day. But he’d already done it. Sunk his teeth into the soft flesh under my temple. Spat the words into my ear that I’ll never forget.

I remember standing up and brushing the dust off my shirt. I remember staring blankly at the million faces asking if I was alright.

I got taken away in an ambulance, blood gushing from the raw flesh on my face, it dripping under the collar of my shirt and tickling my neck. It wasn’t ambulance-serious really, I sat up in the stretcher. I kept saying I’d be late for work. I think they only called it because of the drama of the whole thing. Or because I wouldn’t move from where I was stood.

The doctors cleaned it and gave me a shot for tetanus or rabies or AIDs or something. Then they had to do a skin graft. I was put under general anaesthetic for that— not that it was huge, they were just worried I’d move my face around too much. The scar’s healed pretty well to be fair. You can still see it, but when people ask they’re always shocked to find out it was from a chunk of flesh being ripped off in an old man’s mouth.

Did you know that your finger is as dense as a carrot? You could bite it right off but your brain won’t let you. There’s a mental block.

The man went to one of those high security psyche wards. I imagine him sometimes in a straight jacket or beating his saggy arms against padded walls, screaming and roaring with no one to hear. That’s a fate worse than death in my opinion. Though I suppose he’s not doing either of those things, probably no one is outside of films and overactive imaginations. He’s more likely to be being fed trays of cardboard sandwiches and diluted orange juice, living the rest of his life in bed. I wouldn’t envy that either.

I don’t blame him, really. Even though I couldn’t go outside for a year. Even though I stopped being able to pay rent and my boyfriend broke up with me and I got kicked out of university. I don’t really think that anyone is deserving of blame for anything. You’re born with the wrong wires crossed in your head or a mother who tells you she’d be better off if you’d never existed, and then suddenly you’re 60 and biting a woman on her way to work outside of a Wetherspoons. What I’m saying is that you don’t choose your psychology. And his had to have been pretty fucked.

Things are better now anyway. I got back into uni, a worse one, but still uni. I live with 4 other girls that I adore, and we stay up chatting and drinking wine in the kitchen. I haven’t got a new boyfriend but that doesn’t bother me much. Basically, my life is fine. Terrible things happen to everyone, and most of them make worse stories. I’m in therapy as well which helps, have sleeping pills that knock me out cold so I don’t dream, and basically everything really horrible about that day is gone.

But here’s the thing. Here’s the terrible, fucked up thing that glares at me when I look into the mirror or the eyes of anyone who says they love me.

I kind of liked it.