#salieri

Like a drum, the all too familiar words were echoing through his mind, driving him to pure madness like a hammer pounding against his skull.

Pathetic.

Talentless.

Worthless.

Failure.

Others, he didn't dare to repeat even to himself.

Again and again and they wouldn't stop, wouldn't quiet down, not until the Maestro finally pulled his knife from its hiding place on the inside of his vest and held it between his shaking fingers.

It was his constant companion, a promise for respite from these poisonous, unholy thoughts that were storming the walls he'd built around his innermost self and taking what remained of it, consuming him until nothing else was left. The blade in his hands, it was his deliverance.

If he could cry, the tears would fall from his face like morning dew, to wash away the grief and anger in his heart.

But this small mercy had long since been denied to him.

So he just stared passively at his hands which were rolling up his sleeves now—automation, mechanic movements. Something that felt as if he was a marionette, manipulated by some foreign entity.

But he wasn't. It was all his own doing. From the decision to have his instrument of self-punishment and relief close, always quick to be used, to the moment when he would cut into his flesh, each time a littler deeper, a little less cautioned.

He sank to his knees as if to compare this perverse act of self-mutilation to some kind of sacred offering—just another offense on his long list of committed sins. He'd stopped keeping count, and that fact alone was certainly proof enough that this wasn't a desperate attempt for repentance, to wipe the dark stains of shame and guilt from his soul. No.

It was-

Maybe he wasn't completely sure himself, why he was doing it, but he needed it, there was nothing else that would stop his mind from breaking apart when it was one of those nights.