Fragment #11 - Uncomfortable silence

I know that John is in the other room just now, I know what he is doing. I know what he is doing and I cannot stop it as I'm in his house. He's sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding the razor in between shaking fingers. His breathing is shallow and quick in anticipation. This is the only real release he has left, drugs are but a distraction to him, this is satisfaction, purification, a hidden cleansing covered from the world by shame and indifference a frost coated succour in the dark.
He's holding the cold steel on his arm at an angle and he holds his breath, a white-hot shock goes through his nerves like lightning, shattering his perception, in that instant his world started to make sense, a painful anaesthetic. He drags the blade through the skin listening intently to the rough, wet sound of quiet tearing, a deafening whisper ripping through his ears. Time has stopped, the whole universe pauses for an instant just to see what would happen. He starts to shiver as the pain goes beyond the unendurable and starts to scour through his veins cleaning out all the bad feelings, all the unspent tears, all the damaged hopes, broken dreams and rotted, festering ambition. The beautiful agony is to be met and not ignored, encouraged and never stopped. A fiery hellish bliss of self-loathing and self-mutilation, dry mouthed adulation and love for all the things important and forgotten.
The rusty tangy smell of blood smashes into his nostrils as the liquid trickles down. Boiling crimson magma cooling to a frozen glacier crawling down his arm in an eternity of damp vitality. This is his moment, this is his reason to live, all the bitterness and hate bleeding out an artificial wound, never too deep, never too obvious always with reason, always with design.
Death is the intent, but not his. This is a cremation of care, bleaching the shadows and ghosts that pursued no matter how fast he ran or how dark a corner he hid.
The line on his arm, a hollow open scar, mottled pink and red amongst many in a forest of metal blades through flesh, some healed some fresh some still to be born and grown and bled.
The ritual finishes, red dripping from the tips of his fingers onto the tiles of the bathroom floor, a writing of sorts, each drip another pain lost another gained. A vicious prose written with life, a chapter being lost with every splash. He takes another breath, finds a fresh spot and holds the razor to it.
How do I know this is why he is doing it? Because I did the same once. I hold my head in my hands and try to to cry out in impotence. I cannot help him now.