Most of the people I know choose to do their writing digitally. I don’t blame them. Your hands hurt much less, and it proves to be faster, too. But I prefer writing with a pen. It’s the feeling. The experience is more personal when I’m shaping each letter myself. Each line is manipulated and controlled by me. I’m crafting it. I’m marking the page with my thoughts. Every letter is different each time I write it, not perfect, not set out in straight lines. As my emotions change, my handwriting changes with it, and I feel like without even trying, I can portray how I’m feeling.
I finish this entry and set my pen to the side. With all the time spent in my grasp, you’d expect it to be warm. But as always, it remains as icy as when I first picked it up. It seems my touch does nothing to provide any kind of heat. My pen, my closest companion, yet always so sharp and cold.
With a sigh, I return to the page in front of me. In the dim lighting, I read back through what I’ve just written. For something that was meant to be a simple journal, it turned out to be far too philosophical to fit that definition. I can’t seem to stick to the casual things, my brain won’t let me.
Apart from the book I’m calling a ‘journal’, my desk is littered with stray bits of paper. I guess another fitting name for them would be stray ideas. Little bits of me, way beyond organisation, scattered all around the place. It’s a brilliant metaphor for how I feel inside my head. Thoughts cluttering the small space, long past any possibility of being gathered and made sense of.
The consistent tick, tick, tick of my clock draws me out of the threatening spiral and I focus on that for a second. Small noises become so crisp in stagnant environments.
Tick… tick… tick… tick… tick…
I’m drifting in space, surrounded by –
I hadn’t even realised I’d started writing again until I noticed how cold my hand was. I look down, finding that as expected, my pen is once again present between my fingers. And sure enough, the splintering wood of my desk has the word ‘tick’ scrawled across it about 15 times. How funny I managed that. It was an impulse, but it’s still intriguing that in such a dreamy state, I just subconsciously started writing.
I wonder what else would come out through me by just letting it happen…
Resting my pen-equipped hand on a fresh page of my ‘journal’, I lean back in my chair, the hard edge of the backrest digging into me. I let my eyes drift half shut, loosely focusing on the ceiling while zoning in on the sound of the clock.
Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…
I’m so unaware of actually writing that the chilly sensation in the tips of my fingers is my only reminder.
Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick… Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…
I wonder how many times that clock will tick before it stops… will it ever stop… has it ever stopped before…
The cold from my pen begins to spread up through my palm and along my arm, waking the hairs that sleep there and standing them up on end. At some point, I start to feel a light, and strangely warm, slippery something coating my fingers. It trickles down gradually, slowly replacing the chill and making my pen itself difficult to manoeuvre. I have no idea what it is or where it’s coming from. Perhaps I should stop and look, but the ticking of the clock is so peaceful… so tempting… so much better than reality, that I almost forget.
Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick… Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…
It’s guiding me towards not stopping, to just keep going on and on and on… perhaps forever. But I should really open my eyes and see what I’ve written.
I didn’t shut my eyes completely when I started this, but they have drifted to be throughout the process of my little experiment. They flutter open and I steal just a moment to adjust to the light. After a few ticks of the clock, I straighten back up and look at my work.
Red.
There is red smeared everywhere, all over the paper and all over my hand.
Huh, so that’s what I was feeling.
I abandon my pen on the table and lift my hand closer to my face. It’s coated in a thick layer of blood, still dripping down my skin and off the tips of my fingers. It takes a good minute for me to find its source. The pen has rubbed my skin completely raw in the spot it usually rests. Several layers of my pale flesh are gone, scraped away from the consistent friction against it.
Just how long have I been writing for? It can’t have been longer than a quarter of an hour…
Tick…Tick…Tick…
Accompanied now by a throbbing sting that somehow only started after I saw the wound, I lean forward to examine the work I’ve done. The metallic smell of blood is strong in my nostrils, radiating up off the paper.
Unusually jagged letters and strained-looking words are carved deeply onto the fair pages of my ‘journal’. Some of it is impossible to read through the spots of blood tainting the surface, but most of it is still understandable. Well, understandable in the sense that I can read it, not that I understand its meaning.
After pages of consistent ticks, I finally come across a section at the very end with the pattern broken. Here, among the frequent appearances of the word ‘tick’, there are some others randomly scattered in. But they seem to be missing the information to make them complete ideas.
‘The tick tick tick tick is a lie a lie tick a lie I’m telling tick tick tick each lie lies with the tick tick tick lie tick of tick and lie but the biggest lie is that’
That’s where I stopped writing.
At first glance, even second and third, I can’t make out the meaning of it. Even without the ‘ticks’, which I assume are just there because of my intense focus on the clock, I still can’t decode it. Yet, even through the obsessive repetition of ‘tick’, I feel that there really is a message.
I wonder what the continuation would have been if I hadn’t stopped writing. That last part, ‘but the biggest lie is that’, was the longest it seemed to actually be going somewhere with an actual meaning.
I want to know. Actually, I have to know. It’s starting to itch, and I have to know to stop it. If I don’t know, I’ll never know, and then I’ll just itch forever.
The feeling of it creeping beneath my skin is unnerving. Every cell and fibre of my being needs that sentence to be finished. I need to know what the biggest lie is. I need to know what I was trying to tell myself.
The shock I receive when I pick up my pen is enough to make me jolt. It’s so cold that it burns, setting off my open wound, which begins bleeding again. The pen clatters back onto my desk, teetering slightly on the edge but not falling.
Red against white, my pen, my paper, my skin.
Deciding that I need to clean up before writing again, I stand up and walk through to the bathroom.
Tick…tick…tick…
The noise from the clock follows me. It’s such a recognisable sound, intertwined closely with the concept of time. I’d like to know how long I was there writing for, yet I feel I have no way of checking that. If only I had been counting the ticks…
tick…tick…tick…
I enter the bathroom. As I approach the sink, the crisp white tiles beneath my feet are immediately dappled with red. Each splotch tells the tale of the path that I’ve walked.
I flick the tap up and watch as the milky porcelain bowl pools with pure water.
tick…tick…tick…
The stream turns red the moment I hold my hand out under it. Biting water, which I’m sure I set on warm, turns the colour of poppies, the pollution from inside me spilling out into the world as I try to get rid of it.
My hand gets no less red, despite the amount of blood that seems to contaminate the water. The only change that I can put a finger on is in the tone of the ticks.
Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…Tick…lie…Tick…lie…Tick…lie… lie…lie…
A chill, much like the one I get from my pen, crawls its way down my spine as I listen to the ticks gradually change into lies.
They don’t sound all that different, pretty much the same as they did before. Perhaps the ticks were always lies…
Lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…
I give up on trying to rinse my hands and turn off the tap. The stream of water comes to an abrupt stop. And while it all drains, the bottom of the sink remains red. Red on white yet again.
I fixate on the flannel hanging next to me and my fingers curl around it, red, instantly staining white once more. I scrape the cloth over my already raw and vulnerable skin, desperately trying to be rid of the blood. It stays stubbornly embedded in the pores of my skin, refusing to leave. The more I try to rub it off, the more I rip open my own hands even further. It’s an endless cycle. I only cause more problems the more I try to fix it. The more I try to make it right.
The words from before echo through my head.
But the biggest lie is that
The biggest lie. I tell myself lies all the time. For example, I have no clock in my house, yet somehow, I heard its ticks.
I had been certain that I was hearing a clock, certain that I was hearing time pass. But after a while, I found that those ticks were actually lies. Maybe the ticks in my writing were a part of my message after all.
Or maybe I’m just overthinking this.
Lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…
But that can’t be the biggest lie. That is simply a minor factor in this mess…
Lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…lie…
In reality, nothing here is really all that wrong. There’s nothing to worry about…
LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…LIE…
I look back down at the cloth in my grip, taut around my mangled hand. When I spread it out and flatten its creases, I can see that I have, once again, been writing. Red against white, written in blood, the rest of the message. The answer as to what the biggest lie is. My voice comes out raspy, cutting through the suddenly silent room, all the lies seeming to pause and listen as I read this one aloud:
“Everything is fine.”
Abby Coates, Year 10
