Out.

There's a simple elegance to a cut through skin and muscle. Something to the smooth glide of a finely-sharpened blade. The splitting of a straight line, opening in the wake of the knife. The tans and pastely pales and rich browns giving way to that intricate multitude of monochrome red.

It fascinates him in a way nothing else does. Calms him and trills him. It's addictive, so so very addictive.

But the blood ruins it. Blood is so messy, it spills and paints everything, ruining the contrast of colors, breaking up the straight lines, it's awful. He hates it. He can't find a solution to his predicament though and it eats at him more and more each day.

Draining the blood ruins the colors and takes so long. Waiting until the blood no longer flows isn't even in question for how idiotic a solution that is. He's never been a creative person. Those are the only two things that roil around in his head, taunting him with their mockery of salvation.

He's spent countless sleepless nights agonizing over this. Has spilled his ideas and frustrations over dozens of sheets of paper, words and lines scattered haphazardly among the white, crisscrossing over the offered structure of notebook paper. Even that feels like nails scraping the outside of his skull, just beneath the thin layer of muscle. His words remind him of the blood, both ruining something that could be beautiful.

He thinks then, maybe it's him. Maybe the problem isn't the blood at all. Maybe his hands inspire this chaotic ruination over everything he creates. He throws paints at canvases and claws lines through clay, just to prove himself right. To look over the mess he's created and give rise to that aching rolling mass of thorns that crawls through his sternum.

He wants to cut it out, those sharp claws that pierce his throat and lungs every time he ruins something. He's seen the insides of chests. The ugliness of disorder and mess that lay below the ribs. He hates it. Yet another plague. He's sure that's what claws inside of him. He can feel the disease of hideousness within, festering in the pulpous sodden red of organs. It pours out in every mess he creates, every drop of blood that spills over perfect beauty.

He wants it out.

He's hardly stupid though. He knows what that means. He knows that disfigurement inside of him is what ticks to keep him alive. He can't take it out, can't cut away his own skin to rid himself of that sickening mess. He stares at himself in the mirror sometimes, eyes raking over the smooth surface of such skin. It's perfection. Amplified by the brilliance of musculature just underneath. Yet it all hides a core of revulsion that spills through his hands into his work.

This addiction taunts him. It takes so much effort. He's not stupid. Knows what his actions earn him in the eyes of the law. So much effort for that ecstasy and sooth of splitting the outer layers and it's all wrecked, far too quickly by that core spilling out. Every, single, time.

Maybe, he thinks sometimes, that's a defense. Those cores of repulsiveness that mock him so trying to keep him from exposing their ugliness. He has long since learned to hate the bearers of such twisted cores. They walk around outside his windows, ignorant or uncaring that they are so repugnant inside. He knows he is one of those bearers. He's not stupid. He hates himself for it. Hates his blood-coated core, the trails of it in his veins, and his hands where it all spills out into everything he does.

He wants to cut it out.

It's a third solution. It's not a solution. A third solution that joins the other two. They laugh in his ears with their fruitlessness.

Drain the blood.

Wait.

Cut it out.

His hands are such a masterpiece. So little blood. They're all skin and muscle down to bone. He hates them. They betray him. They dance before his eyes; beauty that teases and tears at him every time they choose to reflect that core in his crafts, in his cuts. That hideousness. He stares at them sometimes. Watches them shake in fear. They know he wants to destroy them. Wants to watch the blade sink into the spaces between the bones where he's sure the core hides. He's not stupid. His hands wield that blade. He can't destroy them. They mock him.

Skulls are another beauty. Each one separates the perfection above from the sickening core beneath. They mock him too. It could be so very perfect, the cuts over domed bone, but the skin is dominated by hair or cowers between protruding cores. He hates those. The core doesn't even try to hide on the face. It stares out at him through every carrier of cores. Two balls coated in snot and slime, held back by lines of gore. They're all ugly. There's so many of them. Every time they turn toward him the urge to sink the nearest sharpest object into them nearly overwhelms him. He's not stupid. They'd scream.

Screaming. He hates screaming. When the core knows he's pulling back it's mask and exposes itself so wide. He made that mistake only once. He's not stupid. He hates his mouth. He's always so hyper aware of the disgusting writhing mass inside it, moving. A mockery of muscle that bathes itself in saliva. He's not stupid. He wants it out. He's not stupid. It stays.

He hates his heart most of all. The true core. The source of the blood and ugliness. The reason his hands betray him. The reason he can't cut out the ugliness in him. It keeps him alive. It mocks him. He can feel it. All the time. He wants it out. Pulsing. Pulsing. Pulsing.

That hideous core.

He wants it out.

He's not stupid.

He wants it Out.

He's not stupid.

He Wants It Out!

Not. Stupid.

OUT!













They find him. He lays in a pool of blood. Eyes open. Jaw hanging. Knife still wedged in a broken rib. It's silver face decorates the carving in his chest. It's sharpened tip pointing fondly toward a stilled, gored, heart.