TM #176. Tell the story of one of your past scars.
"Je-sus. What happened here?" She lays a hand on me, just under the breastbone, where the scar begins -- or, more accurately, where it ends. Her touch turns hesitant. It's the first thing people notice when they get my shirt off, and I've learned to have an answer ready. In this antiseptic age it's easy: drastic operation, looks awful, doesn't it, but I never felt a thing. A plausible, painless lie.
"You should see the other guy," I say, and she laughs, traces her fingers down it, lets them linger where it leads her.
For a minute I think that's the end of it. For a minute, stupid with sex and expensive alcohol, I think about telling her the truth. She likes thrills, this one, likes the sense of danger and the gloss of violence. She'd like there to be some lurid story. Oh, this? Just my death-wound, where my father's spear, already clotted with other men's blood, tore upward into me. The look on his face, the sound of my own voice while I still had breath to scream -- they don't show you these things, sweeting, in the gory movies you like so well.
Nor the months of fever afterward, while my sister's hands lay where yours do now, pouring life into that broken vessel with a power and a purpose I still don't understand.
"So where'd you get it?"
I close my eyes. "Looks awful, doesn't it?"
Mordred
Arthurian legend
244 words
"You should see the other guy," I say, and she laughs, traces her fingers down it, lets them linger where it leads her.
For a minute I think that's the end of it. For a minute, stupid with sex and expensive alcohol, I think about telling her the truth. She likes thrills, this one, likes the sense of danger and the gloss of violence. She'd like there to be some lurid story. Oh, this? Just my death-wound, where my father's spear, already clotted with other men's blood, tore upward into me. The look on his face, the sound of my own voice while I still had breath to scream -- they don't show you these things, sweeting, in the gory movies you like so well.
Nor the months of fever afterward, while my sister's hands lay where yours do now, pouring life into that broken vessel with a power and a purpose I still don't understand.
"So where'd you get it?"
I close my eyes. "Looks awful, doesn't it?"
Mordred
Arthurian legend
244 words