A Cut Too Deep
Sometimes life can weigh you down. Sometimes we need to look inside ourselves for answers. Sometimes, we look too deep…
Listen to “A Cut Too Deep,” and more on the Bedtime Stories for Insomniacs fiction podcast, available on all podcast apps and Audible. Visit BedtimeStories.studio for more information.
“How was school today, dear,” Evie’s mother asked while adding several stalks of asparagus to her plate.
Evie stirred the chicken she had cut up into pea sized pieces around on her dish, mixing it with the jasmine rice.
“Answer your mother, Evie,” her father commanded from the head of the table.
“Fine,” she mumbled. It actually had been yet another hellish day, filled with social faux pas, an embarrassing effort in gym and yet another scathing critique from Mrs. Buchanan in English class. But she knew her parents weren’t interested in actually hearing about her problems.
“How did you do on your math test?”
Evie looked over at her father. That seemed to be the only thing he cared about. But then again, he was Jason Handler, chief technology officer for Quantum Engineering, and his boss was one of the richest men in the world.
“Hundred percent,” she reported.
Jason nodded approvingly as he shoveled a large forkful of meat into his mouth.
“Did you talk to Miss Woodman about trying out again for the cheerleading squad?” her mother asked?
“She doesn’t care about cheerleading, Martha,” Jason said dismissively.
“I’m just saying, if she was on the cheerleading squad, it would open up a lot of opportunities for her to make friends.”
“I have friends, Mom,” Evie said.
“See, she has friends,” Jason echoed.
“I’m talking about boy friends.”
Evie groaned. None of the boys at school were interested in her. Her looks drew in some, but all of them quickly lost interest once they discovered how much smarter she was.
“She’s not in school to get a boyfriend. She’s there to get an education,” Jason stated.
Evie, her head bowed so that her hair hid her face, silently mouthed along with her father’s predictable response.
“Evie can speak for herself,” Martha said in her firm yet meek voice.
“There aren’t even any boys that I like,” Evie lied.
Martha readjusted her posture, sliced the tip from an asparagus spear , and lifted it daintily to her mouth. Once she chewed and swallowed, she changed the subject. “Did you try on those sweaters I bought you?”
“They’re too small,” Evie said.
“You want them tight,” Martha replied. “You have a nice figure.”
“Stop pressuring the girl,” Evie’s father said.
“All I’m saying is I don’t want her to have any regrets. You’re only young once,” her mother declared.
Evie often wondered what decade — or even century — her mother was living in. It was like she lived her life according to the articles in the magazines that were displayed in the checkout line at the grocery store. But at least she made an effort to be a parent. Her father treated her more like one of the products his company manufactured, making sure parameters were being met and key performance indicators were being satisfied.
“May I be excused?” she asked.
“Yes,” her father replied automatically.
“No, she’s barely eaten anything,” her mother protested
Evie didn’t wait for her parents to settle their debate and rose from the table and ran up the stairs to her room.
The next day at school, Evie managed to make it through her morning classes and safely to lunch with no major embarrassments. She took her salad and bottled water to an empty table and began eating.
Josh Yamato sat down across from her and bit into an apple.
Evie looked around to make sure she hadn’t accidentally sat down at a table that was usually populated by the popular kids.
“Hey. You’re Evie, right?” Josh asked.
Evie nodded.
“Cool,” Josh said, chomping noisily on his apple. “Wanna hang after school?”
Evie simply stared at him. Josh was on the short list of boys she might give a second look in an apocalypse situation. “Okay,” she said meekly.
“Cool,” he repeated. “Bunch of us meet behind the stadium. See ya.”
Josh got up and crossed the cafeteria to a table where Evie thought she saw a group of girls looking her way and giggling.
“They’re just messing with you, you know,” said a girl who sat down at Evie’s table.
She looked over to find Mary Batson sitting next to her, scooping large spoonfuls of mashed potatoes drenched in gravy to her mouth.
“I know,” Evie said.
“You gonna go anyway?”
Evie shrugged.
“Scary Mary” Batson was one of the Goth kids in school — though she didn’t seem to hang around with any particular group. She and Evie had English together. The aptly nicknamed girl predictably wrote a lot of dark poetry, and used a permanent marker to draw the tattoos her parents didn’t allow her to get on her pale skin, placeholders for when she was old enough to get the real thing.
“Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s going to ask you to prom.”
“You think so?” Evie asked.
“Hell, no. I’m never wrong. But he is cute for a jock, so you might as well take a chance that I am.”
After school, Evie took her time collecting her things from her locker. Her mother often told her about how when she was a student, they had to carry their big, thick paper books around with them, and back and forth between home and school.
She waited until the herd of students making their way to the exit thinned out, then slipped her backpack over her narrow shoulders, checked her hair one last time in the small mirror stuck to the inside of her locker, and made her way to the door that led toward the stadium.
It was unusually dark for this time of day. Thick clouds hung low overhead, making it seem more like dusk than mid-afternoon.
Evie looked around. She was alone as she walked along the path that connected the parking lot to the football field. The spot Josh had mentioned was behind the concession stand on the home side.
She grabbed the straps of her backpack as she turned the corner.
There was no one there. She walked a little farther, wondering if, despite her stalling, she was the first one to arrive. Perhaps Scary Mary was right. Josh and his friends were messing with her. But her mother’s admonition about regrets echoed in her mind. After all, what was the worst that could happen?
She checked her watch. Something reflected in the crystal covering the timepiece caught her attention, and she looked up just as the contents of a bucket of white paint splashed down on top of her.
She fell to the ground, sitting in a puddle of sticky fluid.
Laughter rained down on her from above.
Evie looked up and saw the faces of Josh and his friends peering down at her over the edge of the stadium wall.
Someone tossed the empty paint bucket down and it bounced off the ground next to her, kicking up a splash of paint into her eyes.
Evie composed herself, trying not to cry. Chances where they had videoed the whole thing and it would be up on someone’s feed or story by the end of the day, and on everyone else’s phone by tomorrow.
She slowly rose from the ground, wiping the paint off her hands and out of her eyes as best she could, and stepped carefully out of the puddle of paint surrounding her until she was sure of her footing.
And then she ran.
Evie could hear laughter and shouting fading behind her. She couldn’t make out what was being said, but the words still hurt. She ran toward the woods that separated the school grounds from the river running through town, and didn’t slow down until she reached the banks of the waterway. She dove in, heedless of what the water would do to the contents of her backpack.
Once she made it to the other side, most of the paint had been washed off. She climbed out onto the rocky bank and kept on going, deeper into the forest. She knew if she kept on walking in this direction, she would eventually come upon her house.
Although she had explored the woods behind her father’s estate on many occasions, she had never gone all the way to the river. The canopy of the tall trees combined with the thick clouds overhead made it feel like night.
The crickets thought so, too.
After walking a short while, she came upon a dilapidated shack in a small clearing. It looked like it had been abandoned for quite some time. Weeds grew up between the boards of the rickety staircase that led to the front door, but it seemed like the door and the small windows set into the weather-beaten walls were intact.
“Hello?” Evie called out. “Is there anyone in there?”
There was no answer.
She climbed the steps and put her hand on the doorknob. It turned easily, and the door creaked open.
It was even darker inside, but Evie could still make out the features of the interior. It was one large room, but the back half of it seemed to be enclosed in some sort of cage. Like the equipment locker in the gym at school.
She spied a candle and a box of matches on a table by the door. The box still had a few red-tipped wooden sticks inside. She pulled one out and struck it against the side of the box. It flared to life, and she quickly touched it to the charred wick of the candle until its flame cast a dim light into the room.
Evie carried the candle to the cage at the back. It was fashioned out of chicken wire, with strands of copper woven through the hexagonal lattice. She stepped inside. There was a musty old chair on one end, facing a shelf that held rows of ancient books. They were mostly hardcover editions. The few paperbacks that it held had been chewed up by some animal she hoped wasn’t still inside.
She set the candle into a holder on a small ledge between the chair and the shelf and scanned the spines of the books. She spotted a copy of Pride and Prejudice, pulled it down and flipped through the pages. The paper seemed fragile, as if it might break if she bent it, but the words were still legible. So, she slid off her backpack, sat down in the chair and began reading by the faint glow of the candle.
It was a while before she noticed that despite everything that had happened to her, and the lingering chill from her wet clothes, she actually felt quite good. Usually, she carried with her a feeling in the back of her mind that everything she did was being watched, that she was never truly alone. But here, inside this weird cage within the ramshackle shack, she felt at peace.
Before long, she realized she had consumed nearly half the novel. She had read other Jane Austen works, but Pride and Prejudice was new to her — though it seemed somehow familiar.
Evie checked her watch and was surprised to find it was nearly dinner time. She wondered if her parents would even notice if she didn’t appear for the evening meal, but decided not to test them. Besides, she was starting to detect the rank odors from the river emanating from her damp clothes.
She snuffed the candle and made her way out of the shack, careful to close the door behind her. She wondered who it had belonged to and why they hadn’t been there for so long.
Even though it was getting even darker, Evie made her way in the direction she thought her house lay until the trees thinned out and she came across a familiar trail that took her back to her own backyard.
She rushed to her room and jumped in the shower, scrubbing the remaining paint out of her hair and out from under her fingernails, then got dressed and headed downstairs for another boring family dinner.
The next day at school, Scary Mary came up to Evie at her locker. “Saw the video. How are you doing?”
Evie shrugged.
“You’re not going to kill yourself or anything, are you?” Mary asked.
Evie shot a scathing look at the goth girl, as if the notion were inconceivable.
“Hey, you never know. I read about a girl downstate who overdosed after some kids put a video of her in the showers online.”
“It’ll pass,” Evie said. From past experience, she knew that if she didn’t react to the effort to embarrass her, Josh and his friends would move on to someone else to harass.
Mary nodded. “Well, if you need a little something to take your mind off the whole thing, come see me.”
“I don’t do drugs,” Evie replied.
“I’m not talking about drugs,” Mary said.
Evie became curious. “What, then?”
“If you really want to know, I’ll show you after school.”
“Okay,” Evie said, wondering what the strange, brooding girl could be talking about.
Evie followed Mary to her house and up the narrow staircase to the girl’s room. It looked exactly how Evie imagined it. The walls were painted black, and posters of metal bands and dark pencil sketches were hung at random intervals.
Mary dropper her backpack and sat on the bed.
Evie joined her.
The goth girl leaned over and pulled a cigar box out from under the hard mattress. She opened it up to reveal a collection of knives, scissors and razors. She pulled out an old-fashioned straight razor and unfolded the blade from the handle.
“What’s that for?” Evie asked, a little nervous.
Mary slid back the long sleeve covering her left arm to reveal a lattice of thin white scars on the inside of her forearm.
Then she ran the blade of the razor between two of the lines.
A moment later, a streak of red appeared as blood welled up from the cut.
Mary sighed, closing her eyes as if the experience was somehow pleasureful.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” Evie asked.
“Yes. Not as much as a paper cut, though. When I really want to feel it, there’s nothing like a nice, fresh sheet of typewriter paper.”
“I don’t get it.”
Mary cut another line into her flesh. “It’s like when I do it, there’s nothing else on my mind. I don’t care what anyone at school thinks or says, I don’t care that my parents don’t seem to know I exist. I don’t care about anything except the pain. It’s freeing.”
Mary pulled a rectangular razor blade from her box of cutting implements. A cardboard sleeve guarded its edge. “Here,” she said, handing it to Evie. “In case you ever want to try it.”
Evie accepted the gift, staring at it as it lay on the palm of her hand, wondering if she could ever find the courage to use it.
As she predicted, things settled down at school and by the beginning of the next week, Josh and his friends had set their sadistic sights on some other poor girl. Things were going well — or at least without any conflict — until English class.
Evie had always enjoyed the reading part of the class, but for some reason struggled when she was asked to write creatively. The most recent assignment was to do a historical fiction short story, from any period of their choosing.
She was surprised that the teacher called her to come to the front of the class to read her story. And even more surprised when the teacher cut her off, then opened a book she had on her desk and read a nearly identical passage from it.
“Plagiarism, Miss Handler, is frowned upon, especially in this class,” Ms. Buchanan said.
“But I didn’t. I’ve never heard that story before. I didn’t mean to — ”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. I did my master’s thesis on Jane Austen. Did you really think you could pull off such a pathetic attempt at cheating?”
“I didn’t cheat,” Evie insisted. But somewhere in the back of her mind, that feeling returned. The feeling that she was being watched. That she was being judged. Which then made her unsure of what she thought she knew to be true. Had she inadvertently replicated a story she had read before?
Evie bowed her head and returned to her seat, passing Scary Mary, who ran the tip of one finger across her forearm as Evie passed. She remained silent for the rest of the class.
When the bell rang, she did her best to ignore the taunts from her classmates they issued under their breath as they passed her in the hall.
After school, she ran home and bounded up the stairs to her room. She opened the center drawer of her desk and fished around among the pencils and paper clips until she found the razor blade Scary Mary had given her. She clutched it in her hand, then dashed out of the house, ran across the yard and disappeared into the woods.
Evie found the abandoned shack without much trouble. When she entered, she was relieved to find it was exactly as she had left it. She lit the candle and carried it to the metal cage. Almost instantly, she felt the anxiety that had been smothering her since English class lift from her shoulders.
But the embarrassment from that moment clung to her like the smell of the river had on her first visit to the shack.
She sat down in the dusty chair and pulled out the razor blade. She cautiously slipped off the cardboard guard and examined the pristine edge by the light of the candle.
She laid her left arm on her lap and stared at her unmarred skin. Could she do it? Could she actually cut herself? And would doing so give her the same release it gave Mary?
She placed one corner of the blade against her flesh, halfway between her elbow and her wrist, and pressed.
The razor cut effortlessly into her arm. She could feel it slicing into her, but the pain she expected was absent. It was nothing more than the touch a feather to her senses.
She pressed harder, until a full quarter inch of the blade was sunk into her skin, then she ran it across her arm, cutting deeper as she went.
She pulled the blade away, expecting the see a line of crimson fluid seep out of the wound.
But there was nothing.
The skin was definitely cut. She could see the part between the edges. Yet there was no blood.
Evie set the razor aside and prodded the laceration with her fingers. She was able to insert the tip of one digit under her skin. She added a second fingertip and pulled it open.
Something ruptured. She felt a warm fluid gush between her fingers and pulled them free.
They were covered with a white liquid.
Evie stared at the glistening secretion in the flickering light of the candle.
What was it?
Evie turned her attention to the cut in her arm that was now rimmed with the pale fluid. She inserted her fingers as deep as she could, looping them under one edge.
Then she pulled as hard as she could.
She could feel the flesh tearing. There was pain, but nothing more than that she had experienced brushing up against a sharp branch. It peeled back like the skin of a banana.
Underneath, where she expected to see something like the illustrations in her biology textbooks of the musculature of the human body, there were strange gray ribbons of varying widths attached to bones that appeared to be made of some porous metal.
Evie’s mind tried to reconcile what she knew about herself and what she was seeing. She was the teenage daughter of Jason and Martha Handler. She could remember her first day of school, running through sprinklers when she was small, singing in the school Christmas pageant, taking piano lessons.
Only now, when she tried to draw on those memories, there was nothing there. Her entire identity was just a façade.
Something akin to cognitive dissonance created a condition that severed her consciousness from her body. She no longer had control over her motions and was frozen in place, unable to move even her eyes.
But that didn’t matter, because what they saw, slowly faded to black.
Jason Handler opened the door and shined his flashlight into the rundown shack. He spied Evie sitting in the old easy chair. “She’s in here,” he called out, as he stepped inside the one-room structure and entered the cage in which his daughter sat motionless.
Martha Handler followed, her own flashlight in hand. “What is this place?” she asked.
“I almost forgot it was here. My father built it a few years before he died. He was convinced the government was reading his mind using a chip they had implanted in his head.”
“Were they?” Martha asked.
“Of course, he had a lot of state secrets in that addled brain of his. So he made himself a Faraday cage to block the signals, a place he could come to where he couldn’t be monitored,” Jason explained.
“That’s why we couldn’t locate Evie using her tracker,” Martha remarked as she examined the elaborate pattern of copper wiring woven into the chicken wire. “No reception.”
“Exactly. Remember the gap last week after those kids played that joke on her? That’s when she must’ve found this place.”
“And this is where she came after that horrible English teacher embarrassed her. I told you we shouldn’t have given her access to literary databases she hadn’t read.”
“I’m beginning to think the whole decentralized memory architecture was a bad idea. If she hadn’t cut herself off from her remote routines, she would have never experienced a debilitating sensory overload like this.”
Martha looked at the wound in her artificial daughter’s arm. “The poor thing. Imagine discovering she was an android like this. It must’ve been horrifying.”
“Yes, well, back to the drawing board, I guess,” Jason sighed.
Martha reached out and straightened Evie’s hair. “What a shame. I had the prettiest dress picked out for her prom.”
For more information about the author, his novels, television credits, podcast and more, visit RichHosek.com.
