●●●One hand against ankles, one hand on her throat, the sound of ripped clothes filling the room, and lips? Everywhere they shouldn't be. Everywhere she didn't want them to be. ●●●

She crashed and burned.

Broken, hopelessness set in stone, written in blood...her blood.

For a boy that wasn't hers, hers to love but never hers to keep.

She shattered, vaguely aware of the unshed tears pooling at those brown eyes.

For a boy made of cigarette smoke, hope and paper-thin lies.

A boy with the soul of an artist, the body of a god and blue mesmerising eyes that weeped darkness, the suffocating, horrifying darkness that she had failed to see time and time again.

Her best friend.

Except you see, he wasn't, never really was.

She shook her head in agony, red, so much red, her guilt was red, her rage was red, her love was red and her hate was red.

She felt red.

It seeped into her bones like a pest...a parasite, until she wanted to tear her skin open and scratch it out.

She felt red.

As red as the blood oozing from her broken skin, her attempt at feeling.

She was numb, no, everything hurt but her heart felt numb, numb to everything, numb to pain, to sorrow, to shame, to guilt, to anger.

Everything.

She didn't want to be numb, she would rather feel pain, so she scrubbed and scrubbed. 

Still not clean.

She scrubbed some more, harder.

She needed to feel something, even if it was just pain, something, anything, anything to remind her that she was still breathing. Still human. She needed to scrub away his coconut fragrance, the one that was invading her senses and wrapping itself around her throat like a nightmare.

Scrubbed away his golden touch...

Scrubbed away his poison...

Scrubbed away his lying lips...

Scrubbed away her shame, her guilt...

But she couldn't scrub it all away, after all, there had to be some part of it to forever torment her, remind her that it was not a dream. She couldn't scrub away her screams, her choking sobs, her frantic pleas for help and her tears.

Everytime she closed her eyes, she saw them looking at her, judging her, in her fragile state on her walk back home.

Eyes that didn't understand, eyes that didn't care.

<Slut!> those eyes seemed to scream.

<Bitch!> were their feral snarls.

<Whore!> the words behind their pursed lips.

"Whore!" she scrawled on her mirror in red sultry lipstick, tears and black mascara streaming down her cheeks.

<Slut!> <Hoe!> <She wanted it!> <Look at her dress!> <Boys are boys, girls are sluts!> <She was probably too drunk to remember!> <Sluts don't get to say 'No'!>

And she bled.

She bled and bled and bled, bled for the universe with unimaginable evil residing in it, bled for paper-thin lies and those who tell them, bled for the boy with King Midas touch, who had once made her feel whole, and bled for the horrifying darkness behind his ocean eyes.

Just bled.

Bled until she was just a shell, just a girl held together by cigarette smoke, hope and paper-thin lies.

"I was raped," came her broken whisper to the concerned voice at the other side, "All is Red!"