But I also didn’t expect to be staring at a total fucking stranger either.

I leaned in close to the mirror. I felt around my long knotted beard with my fingertips and almost lost my shit when they dropped into my severely sunken cheeks. The bones around my dark and hollowed eye sockets protruded out like a fucking caveman. My once hazel eyes which now looked more like a muted shit-colored brown.

At least Grace won’t ever have to see me this way.

Even when my hair was at its longest, I’d always kept the top long and shaved the sides to show off the tattoos on both sides of my head. Post-torture, the parts that were normally short were grown out well past my shoulders, and for some reason looked much darker than the medium blond I remember it being.

I looked like a skinnier, demented version of Jesus Christ.

Walking death.

I could count my ribs, something I hadn’t been able to do since I was a kid and suddenly I was back on the playground again, getting the shit beat out of me by a sumo wrestler of a twelve-year-old who entered puberty well before his time.

Everything about the pathetic soul in that mirror told a story that didn’t bare repeating. My head spun. I grabbed onto the sink for support and lowered my head, staring at the thin ring of rust around the drain.

After every single motherfucking thing I’d been through in my life, I’d never considered myself a victim.

But a victim was all I saw in that mirror.

With one last scowl at my reflection I shuffled over to the toilet and leaned on the wall, pulling out my flaccid cock to take the piss I’d started to take earlier, but I couldn’t help but keep thinking about Grace.

You are a good person, my Samuel. You’re a good boy. Grace’s words rang in my head. You are loved.

Mid-piss I stepped away from the toilet, spraying urine on the seat and floor. I ripped open the cabinet under the sink. I knelt and my knees crunched loudly, like gravel being rubbed together. I groaned at the odd sensation and the even more awful sound.

“Are you okay in there, Preppy?” Doe asked from the other side of the door.

“Fine,” I barked back. Of all people she didn’t deserve my irritation. I instantly felt guilty. “Fine,” I repeated, softening my tone as much as I could although it wasn’t much when my teeth were still gritted and I was speaking through the splitting pain burning in my legs and torso.

“Okay, we’ll all be out in the living room. So...you know. That’s where we will all be when you’re done. Waiting for you.” Sadness filled her voice. “I’m so sorry, Prep,” she added. I heard the slide of her hand as she ran it down the outside of the door followed by the light padding of her feet on the carpet and finally, the sound of the outer door of the bedroom clicking shut.

I reminded myself to apologize to her for being such a dick. She didn’t deserve me throwing a tantrum just because of what I’d been through.

I was just so fucking tired. Tired of laying there in that bed for so long. Tired of wasting fucking time. Tired of not living.

Tired of being fucking dead.

And maybe I was just tired of being fucking tired.

Once I found what I was looking for I held onto the sink and righted myself to stand back up. I plugged in what I thought was the solution to my problem, waving it in the air tauntingly. “Bye-Bye, motherfucker,” I said to my reflection. I flipped the switch and swear I saw panic flash in his eyes as the buzzing sound echoed off the walls of the small bathroom.

I clicked over to the shave setting and ran the clippers over the top of my head from front to back in one long stroke.

A sense of immediate satisfaction coursed through me as I ran my fingertips over the newly sheared section of my head.

I needed to do more.

Much more.

ALL OF IT HAD TO GO.

I didn’t bother to cut the hair with scissors first so every strip I shaved off burned like I was slowly being scalped, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t give a shit about the pain.

Not anymore.

Pain wasn’t exactly a new thing for me.

However, freedom was.

Feeling free from the anger. From the regret. Free from not caring if I could ever be the person I was before all the shit went down.

That person was almost as much of a stranger as the fucked up Jesus in the mirror who was in the process doing some long overdue and much needed manscaping.

My head was bloodied and scraped as I worked the clippers over my head again and again.

I didn’t fucking care.

More and more hair dropped down and piled on top of my feet. First from my head and then from my face when I started on my beard, until I was completely clean and skin that hadn’t seen the light of day in years was now bared to the world.

To me.

The satisfaction I felt while cutting it all off quickly turned to disappointment and a sudden sinking feeling. I gripped the sides of the sink and let my head fall with a growl.

I’d expected to be staring at someone new.

Someone clean.

The reality was that I was anything but.

Rage burned in my chest, bubbling over to a boil when I realized it was still the tortured looking man from moments before.

Just clean shaven.

And now all the weight loss and scars were on full fucking display. Every lump and poorly healed cut. My once colorful tattoos on the sides of my head were tattered and scarred like tears in my paper thin skin, matching the many many ruined ones on the rest of my body.

A roar tore from my throat. I reared back and punched my reflection, sending shards of glass to the floor, dying the piles of hair with drops of thick red which also dripped down the center of the cracked mirror. It wasn’t enough. I punched it over and over again, my fist burning with the pain of each impact against the glass. “I fucking hate you!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, spit flew from my mouth as I wailed and wailed on the mirror until my knuckles were completely covered in red.

I fell to the floor as my shoulders shook with rage turned despair. I crumpled into a ball, pulling my knees up to my chest and willed the world to go the fuck away.

Willing it ALL to go the fuck away.

I clutched my bleeding hand and went to the only place I felt safe. Deep in my mind to memories so clear and bright I thought sometimes that they’d never happened at all.

I closed my eyes and started to drift away amongst the piles of my stripped identity. I was so far gone down the path that took me to that place that when I heard all of the commotion going on around me, I couldn’t bring myself to lift my head to see what it was all about. Not even when the door burst open, the hinges falling from the frame, skidding across the floor. Not even as a cascade of concerned voices, both male and female, shouted above me to one another.