My head snaps back, and I know a bruise is forming. The auditorium is full of eyes. We’re all the same, except I’m the one being hit. All the same brown hair. All the same blue eyes. All the same thin body. All the same pointy nose. All the same. They all look like they’re on the verge of death. I bet I am too. My ribcage jutting out, and my cheekbones hard to ignore. 

When another slap comes, it feels like a punch. I feel my nose break, and it hasn’t been the first time. Sucking in a breath, I open my eyes. The dean gives me a hateful look. His eyes like a snake’s. Slits. Full of hunger. Hunger for blood. Children cower back, too afraid to say stop. To say no. To say anything. I know why. 

I remember the first time I saw him do this. A public beating. A girl in my class had called Justin, my friend, a gay slur behind his back. He had come crying to the dean’s office, unable to hold back his emotions, at the age of seven. Unlucky for him, that girl was the dean’s daughter. The dean had screamed at Justin. Telling him that he was a liar, a traitor to humanity. He dragged him out by the ear and into the auditorium. Every child watched as the twenty lashes came. Each one stinging my heart for the boy. I cried that day. Hard and loud. 

That was my first beating too, and from there on out, I was no longer the same.

After I return to my room, the closed section in the basement, I scream into my pillow. Mother doesn’t listen, and father tells me to be a man.  

“Grow up, boy. Take a few hits. That’ll teach ya something.” His voice was heavy with the stink of bourbon. 

Mother yawns when I tell her about earlier today, tear streaks glistening my battered place. “You ruined my mani-pedi, and don’t spread falsities darling. It’s a sin!” she replies. 

After I heard those words, I knew my childhood was over, floating away in the wind. I choked back the burning in my chest. This unexplainable feeling. Worse than stinging bees or bone-crushing hits. No, this was worse. I tried to open my mouth to respond that day; nothing came out. Fear had put such a weight on me. I was afraid of that door shutting and locking. My parents love and support on the other side. Slouched shoulders and labored breathing defined me that day. That week. That month. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. Daunting to allow them to see by broken spirit. 

But something had been modified in me that day too. Like the crooked look of a nose after it was broken. Something different about me. Something wrong and weird. 

Defiance.

People march in straight lines. Stay quiet in class. Do homework when told. This school is like all the others. They’re all the same. In a world like this, dangerous means different. Different means dangerous, and there is nothing in between. 

I tried to learn from my supposed mistakes. I laughed at the wrong time, I smiled and frowned at the wrong time. “There was always something wrong about him,” the children whispered. They had learned to hold their masks. They had learned to turn their backs on me. They had learned to shut up and just sneer. They had made me the “Other”. The bad apple. The black sheep. They always did that, to save their own hides.

I was so tired, and soon my screaming turned into sobs, and my sobs turned into cries, and my cries turned into sniffles. With bloodshot eyes and shaking hands, I stood. 

I shuffled toward the door. It creaked open and I slipped outside. I winded my way through the memorized hallways. Towards the kitchen. Towards the knives. Toward my punishment. Towards my death.  

I sliced and I sliced. Till red coated the walls, and my heartbeat slowed. I sliced till I heard no sound and felt no pain. 

I sliced and I sliced because no one heard me, no one listened, and no one cared.

I sliced because they were all the same; I sliced because the pain had drowned me.

I sliced so I could make my only true statement. 

I sliced so they could hear my scream, my plea, and my cries. 

I sliced.