Hello, and welcome!

I’m going be sharing some short works over the next few weeks. Here’s this week’s story, called ‘Threads’.

I’ve always been self-destructive. The kind person who will pick at scabs and pull at loose threads, without realising that, sooner or later, everything will unravel, fall apart and leave me bleeding.

This is a final confession, a list of the stupid things I did and how they led to my death. A list of the threads I kept on pulling and how they fell apart.

The first was my mother. I tugged at her patience throughout my life and eventually, it unravelled.

You see, it was always just my mother and me. There never was any greater concept of family. We had one another and that was supposed to be enough. But of course, it wasn’t. I pulled at the threads of her patience, asking her endless questions about why it was just us. The kids at school all I had fathers, or stepfathers, or aunts and uncles that helped out. Why didn’t I?

Eventually, the threads snapped, and she lost patience with me. The alcohol didn’t help, it probably wore her patience thin. I remember her drunken yelling, the blows…

The neighbours must have been able to hear her as well, because someone called the police. There was a social worker, a strange, scatty woman who tried too hard to be my friend. She took me away from my home and I lived in a sort of orphanage for a while, but still, I insisted on pulling at a new thread. Well, in many ways, it was the same one, just a different strand. The strand that connected me to my unknown father.

I was adamant that I wasn’t an orphan, so I did as much research as I could and eventually, I tracked him down. At first, the man wanted nothing to do with me, but I’m nothing if not persistent. Especially when I shouldn’t be.

I kept in contact with him, stubbornly writing emails, texts and letters. As he blocked my numbers and email addresses, as I watched through the window while he tore my letters in two, I planned new ways to get in touch with him. Fake numbers I could use. Places where I could accidentally stumble across him.

Yes, in many ways, I became a stalker. But even as it dawned on me that what I was doing was insane, I continued desperately. Even as I realised that everything I had would fall apart again, I kept pulling at the threads, like some neurotic kid following their obsessive cycle, biting at nails and picking at scabs.

But the threads of my father’s patience didn’t fall apart as violently as my mother’s. He didn’t turn on me when they snapped, but instead, he seemed to take pity on me. He agreed to spend time with me.

We used to have our awkward little chats in a coffee shop near his house. For an hour or two, it would feel like we were normal. We’d sit down and talk. He would tell me about work and his – my – extended family. And I, feeling like I finally had everything I ever wanted, a complete and ordinary family, was careful, for once in my life. I kept the clumsy questions about my mother and their past together bottled up in my head.

The awkwardness soon passed. I felt like my father truly cared for me. If not as his daughter, then as his friend. And I cared for him. No, more than that, I worshipped him, simply for treating me with some dignity, after everything we had been through.

But what leads one to pull at loose threads if not curiosity? A sense that they shouldn’t, perhaps? I had both. So of course, it was inevitable that one day, I would ask the forbidden question, knowing as I did that I was throwing away everything I had spent my childhood dreaming of.

His face was blank and impassive as I spoke of my mother. I asked him all the questions on my mind. How had he met her? Did he still love her? Was she an alcoholic then? Was she violent? Did he know—

Eventually, he cut me off. He looked up at me with cold, empty eyes and told me it was time for me to leave.

I knew then, as I stood up with tears in my eyes, that I wouldn’t see him again. It was history repeating itself.

This time, I didn’t have the energy to chase him around and beg him to charge his mind. I hardly had the energy to do anything. And I certainly didn’t have the time. Because I was eighteen now, and that’s when the system stops caring about the children ‘rescued’ from homes. I had to leave the children’s home and since I had nothing and no one else left, all my free time was spent searching desperately for a job.

However, my rescue came in a completely different, miraculous form. While hunting for a job, I met Thomas. He was handsome, rich and, amazingly, interested in me. Within a month, we were living together in his beautiful apartment. I could hardly believe my luck.

But of course, I had to ruin it, like I ruined everything else. I began to pull at his life as well, with a kind of crazed curiosity. I was trying to find something to reassure me that he actually liked me. After all, we were worlds apart. He had no reason to care for me.

What I actually found was where he went when I wasn’t home. The hotel Nikti was an interesting place. There were always a lot of pretty young women there, for one thing. In his room.

Another beautiful thing destroyed by mindless pulling at threads.

There is another interesting thing about threads, you know? A thread is such a tiny, fragile thing… Like me. But when it’s wound around someone’s neck, it has the power to destroy.

My mother. My father. Thomas. I called them my threads. But the only threads in my life that didn’t snap were the ones around all their necks.