Clementine’s Revenge
A minivan emblazoned with a home health logo pulled up in front of a small, well-kept house. Jacqueline put it in park, and grabbed her tablet.
“This one is Henry Kershaw. 92 years old. Hypertension and atrial fibrillation. He's good about taking his meds, but needs his blood drawn often. He's a surprisingly easy stick.”
Cleo glanced over at the porch. An old man sat in a rocking chair, whittling. He waved. The sunlight glinted off the knife in his hand.
“Umm… is that such a good idea?”
“What, hon?” Jacqueline mumbled, distracted as she gathered her supplies.
“He is on anticoagulants. So maybe playing with knives is not exactly wise?”
Jacqueline laughed, “He's fine! That's his hobby and he's always been quite safe about it. No worries…. Come on. This is the last appointment before lunch,” she lovingly rubbed her rounded belly, “and baby wants to go to Rib Shack today.”
“Now there's a lovely young lady I have not seen before. Pretty as a picture.” The old man exclaimed as they made their way onto the porch.
“Mr. Kershaw, this is Clementine— but she likes to be called Cleo. She will be covering for me when I go on maternity leave next week.”
“Nice to meet you,” Cleo stepped forward and shook his hand.
A strange mix of familiarity, hunger, and excitement flickered across the old man’s face. Cleo pulled her hand away and unconsciously wiped it on the pant leg of her scrubs. She felt deep disgust as she struggled to regain her composure.
Jacqueline began to go about taking the old man’s vitals, “Now you better be on your best behavior while I'm gone, Mr. Kershaw.” She teased and wagged a finger. He solemnly nodded and made a “cross my heart” gesture.
Cleo typed the visit note on the tablet as Jacqueline obtained the old man’s bloodwork. As soon as he possibly could, the old man gleefully picked up his knife again. He selected a peach from the table beside him and began carefully peeling it.
Jacqueline shook her head as she labeled the tube of blood, “I never know how you do that so nicely, Mr. Kershaw. You sure make it look easy.”
“Takes years of practice,” he said as he slid the knife along the delicate skin of the fruit in a slow, steady spiral, “I like to take it all off in one piece, but sometimes the blade really gouges into the flesh, like so.” He winked at Cleo and smiled, “But I just keep going, nice and steady...” He trailed off and licked his wrinkled lips, almost in a trance, “It's just so… satisfying.” He proudly held up the finished product, oblivious to the juice trickling down his wrist from the glistening fruit, “Pretty as a picture.”
*****
That night, as Cleo undressed, she looked uneasily into the mirror. She was reluctant to process this information.
It's just a superstition, Cleo reasoned with herself. Birthmarks don't reveal how you died in a past life. Give me a break. Total bullshit.
But then the picture came to mind of the old man twisting the knife blade around the fruit in his hand…
She looked at the pale, solid line, like a finger's width scar, that went from her right pinky and ran all the way around her body like a ribbon. A “runner”, it's called. An unusual birthmark of which she had always been self-conscious.
Her eyes fell on the spot where the runner suddenly widened and transformed into a large, messy blotch— referred to as a “cafe au lait” spot by her dermatologist. She followed the mark as it flowed across her sternum.
My heart.
She ran her shaking hand over it as her birthmark continued its path under her left breast.
“Sometimes the blade really gouges into the flesh, like so.”
Her eyes followed the line as it continued back into its original serpentine fashion around and around her body, eventually ending at her left ankle.
“But I just keep going.”
It occurred to her she was certainly not the only one. The sick bastard was a relatively healthy 92 years old. What a long, evil run he's had. And now he sits on his porch, peeling fruit and perversely reminiscing…
As she met her gaze in the mirror, Cleo's resolve solidified. She knew what needed to be done.
The Back of My Head
(A fictional tale)
"Mister, the back of your head is bleeding."
I often hear that from someone standing behind me and my bald dome in a line at the store.
My usual response is polite: "Thank you, but it only looks that way. The red mark is just a birthmark."
But it is not a birthmark. It is an indelible scar made long ago by a jagged rock that struck me from behind as I was taking a shortcut home from grade school. The wound left me temporarily unconscious, made me miss a year of school, and ever since has left me in and out of hospitals and interfered with my cognitive abilities. When I had a long mop of black hair, no one saw the ugly scar. No one knew that it was the cause of my dropping out of college, losing two jobs because I could not stay focused, and being called "dumb." And when I lost my hair, no one knew the scar was the cause of my forced early retirement, and why two relationships went south.
I never did find who threw the rock.
But if I did, and if he or she was standing behind me and said I was bleeding, my response would not be polite.
A branding tongue never heals.
Piercings,tattoos and scars.An old removal,now a new wound.
A dangling ornament filling a void,in the hole that was never meant to be there.
Now a scar hidden beneath the metallic charm.
Removal from Dissaproval.
Lasers penetrating the open wound into a blossoming ill-proportioned blemish.
Some piercings,tattoo and scars are on the inside.
No Removal,No disapproval.
No laser eyes piercings through visceral lesions.
The only scars that you can't remove are the ones inflicted by sneers,that try to snare you into a caged mind,with no apparent escape of their conflicting,did it yourself oversight.
No gun to the head,or knife to the back that drives unauthorized malleable choices that descend into the intricate membrane of desensitized inflicting wounds.
Mark of honour
There's a mark on my left wrist. Not just a dot of a birthmark but a prominent one which I'd always been conscious of. A conversation starter, it would send my cheeks flushing as a child. Why did I get one on the wrist, for everyone to see? Long-sleeved shirts were my standard attire, much to the amusement of my friends. "Hey, show us your awesome tattoo!" They joked.
My mum tried to put a positive spin on it. A devout Hindu, she told me a birthmark can reflect something from an earlier life. Mine was wavy with a peak at the top. It's fire, she said. Maybe there was an incident with fire in your past life. This fascinated me. It may also have been the reason I became a firefighter.
When Nandini and I fell headlong into each other, life was complete. Yet, she was apprehensive of my line of work. She prayed for my long life and showered blessings with the sacred flame of Lord Ganesha.
"This fire," She said, gently nudging the fragrant smoke from the flame towards me, "will protect you. May Lord Agni keep you safe." For a firefighter, Lord Agni is the divine beacon and it was put to the test when a skyscraper in South Mumbai went ablaze.
After hours of perilous operation, the inferno was doused. It did leave a mark on me though. Due to a rip in my uniform, I got burns on my wrist, right where the birthmark used to be.
When my mother saw the scar, she caressed it lightly and said: "See? It looks like a star now, for good luck. Lord Agni protected you, once again."
I carry it like a badge of honour since.
Hater’s From Birth
I think that hater's hate to create a screen with more living action.
They hate a person's forever being and destroy the laws of attraction.
They settle for flaws instead of improvement within their dwell.
They report back to their leader
An evil demention of hell.
We smile and ignore the rude way it's presented.
We walk away, block them out because we know that they are demented.
One day I'm going to lean in and give my haters a hug.
I'll show them that hating me shows simple thoughts of love.
If you could go backwards, prenatal existence rarely makes the cut of a time you're likely to want to revisit. After all, that's before you existed, so you would either be interacting with your mom, or you'd be on another plane existence, a cellular level, inside of a placenta or a needle. For me, the scar could have been the needle, since my mom aborted one of us at eleven weeks and I was born at twenty four, a miracle of modern medicine that I've since made it to twenty four years rather than weeks, avoiding death regularly outside of that womb rather than narrowly avoiding death within it. My birthmarks weren't birthmarks, but scars of the battles fought in infancy.
But other people’s could easily be scars from the battles fought before conception, prior lives even. There's a midrash that states all babies know everything there is to know until an angel pinches them under the nose right before birth to make their mind empty again, so for all of our lives, we never actually anything for the first time, we're always re-learning what we knew before birth. That mark between our nose and mouth then is the scar of the angel’s pinch, so perhaps other birthmarks are scars from angels doing other acts of violence against our unborn bodies, ones we may have even consented to before knowledge of consent was removed alongside everything else in our minds.
Why? Did you think I’d forget?
My hand wandered in thought. It always did. Whenever I was deep in thought, it would stray to this perfectly straight line of freckles that ran down from my temple to just bellow my eye. A burst of frustration surged through my veins. I was now 16 years of age, or at least it looked that way. I was actually 2000 years old, or I had been until my old right-hand man had tried to kill me with a magic laced silver dagger.
You see I’m a fairy and it’s rather difficult to kill me. Over my 2000 years of life, I have collected lots of magic and old long forgotten charms to protect me as the reigning monarch of the Land of the Forgotten. Mortal weapons have no effect on me, mythical and demonic beasts all respect and obey me, iron normally effects fairies but doesn’t affect me to the same extent due to my half mortal blood (just gives me a nasty headache), and I have all sorts of wards to protect me against elemental magic. The only thing that could possibly kill me are old silver relics laced with the destructive magic of the Old Mages who died for the relics and pored their life source into the items, but even then I just reawaken at the age of 13, which is really irritating cause I have to train and become stronger again and the whole dying temporarily thing is painful and an exhausting process to go through.
Grinding my teeth and dropping my arm as HE walked in, I thought angrily, “If you’re going to take my kingdom from me and kill me at least do it correctly. “
I wasn’t a bad ruler. My right-hand man was a greedy pig and thought he could take it from me when we had finally achieved peace for the Forgotten. Bastard.
He now sat on the ancient throne of the Forgotten, MY throne, the throne that had been in my family for centuries. He sat on it with his large wine belly, chubby face, grubby hands and his piggish eyes dancing with delight as he ogled the handmaidens. Glaring from under my hooded cloak I stood silent as all servants who waited on the king should. I was only a cup bearer, but it gave me full access to his drink so I could lace the wine or whatever drink had taken his fancy that week with magic.
Standing there I thought of why I had kept him on as my right-hand man, even when I had known he was a greedy pig, the reason being he had a knack for getting into places he wasn’t meant to be and more importantly I thought I had owed it to his brother, High heavens hold him in his eternal slumber, to look after the oaf. Now he has stolen my throne, has made my people suffer at his chubby greedy paws and I now must be one of his servants to get close enough to slowly curse his soul for all eternity and eventually duel him for the throne as the honourable thing would be to do!
Glee like a kid getting away with a successful cookie jar heist rushed through me as I thought of how much I’m going to enjoy making him pay for my peoples suffering at his hands and his outrageous spending of resources. The land was almost destroyed because of him and his greed.
Month in and month out I kept serving him, slowly, bit by bit lacing his drinks with subtle traces of magic that he would be too drunk to notice.
Month in and month out I trained and trained, from dusk till dawn, I trained until my hands were raw.
Month in and month out I spread stories of a challenger arising to challenge the Pig King.
Month in and month out I won the peoples favour secretly, promising them vengeance and the payment due to them for their suffering.
Month in and month out he grew more paranoid and became harsher with his punishments and depleted more resources trying to win the favour of the nobles.
Month in and month out the people started rebelling.
And then, the silver dagger was stolen, and a challenge was demanded of the king. In an intoxicated state he accepted the challenge and rashly announced that it would be held at the next high moon, in the ancient amphitheatre of the Old Ones. High moon was in 3 days. The dumb oaf had just signed and sealed his own life away and had it presented to me on a silver plate.
Paranoid and frantic he tried to gain back the strength he’d lost over a long 50 years of feasting and drinking. He frantically paced away those 3 days, searching for a way out.
Day 1 was paced away with all of 15mins of battle prep that ended in hunched over gasps and fits of coughing.
Day 2 was paced away as they searched for a willing mage to put a spell on the king to de-age him. They came up empty handed.
And day 3 was paced away in a fit of wheezes, coughs and failed training attempts all to end with him finding the most outlandishly decorated and covering armour and drinking the night away until the sun dawned on the challenge day.
As he walked into the arena the crowd roared with displeasure. Almost the whole kingdom had gathered to watch his downfall. Across from him I stood, standing in my silver cloak, hood concealing my identity, my traditional war paint smeared on my cheekbones and high pointed ears. Even without the symbol of my war paint that only I wore and the family sword that hung at my hip completely concealed by the cloak everyone in the kingdom would recognise me. Their old queen. The moment I removed the cloak I would watch his face fall and go snow white with fear for he thinks his worst nightmare lies cold and dead 3ft under, the bastard couldn’t even bury me properly.
The horns blare, the crowds roar and the old arena came alive again for the 1st time in almost 2100 years. His hand goes to his horrendously and grossly over decorated sword and he charges. I glide easily away. "He’s lost his touch," I think to myself as he almost trips and falls when he meets no resistance to his charge.
Smirking I grip the very dagger he tried to kill me with, still hidden from my cloak and my identity still concealed. He swings round and charges again. Without turning around, I dodge with the grace gifted to me through my ancient blood. I find a tiny gap in his armour. I slice. Nobody sees it until he grunts, falls to a knee and brings his hand to the wound to find blood seeping out. Turning around his boring brown eyes are wide, and his mouth hangs open flabbergasted. The crowd is silent, nobody knows how I did it. Smiling wickedly, I whip my cloak off and let it fly with the wind. All the blood drains from his face as he looks at me. Healthy, young, strong, alive and brimming with the fury of all the monarchs who governed the beautiful Land of the Forgotten before me.
The crowd goes wild. Smirking, I’m in front of him in a second. Dagger to his throat I whisper for only him to hear fear making my words harsh and full of dark humour, “Why? Did you think I forgot? After all these years. She must have forgotten the anger from my betrayal. She can’t possibly burn with fury still. She would understand. Right? Think again.” And with that I ended his miserable existence and burnt his body as we do with traitors and not as I would have my right-hand man. I would say sorry to his brother when I do meet him on the other side but until then I will reign as monarch of the Forgotten and wear the birthmark from the wound that almost killed me, as a warning to all those who try to hurt the Forgotten ones and dare go against their Queen.
Death By a Thousand Needles
I’ve never been afraid of needles, but I still can’t stop the shiver that goes down my spine when the first needle pierces my skin. I’m almost grateful for the blindfold as I feel the needle slide deep into my right arm, a few inches below my elbow. Another swiftly follows, this time just above my knee. Then, another in the back of my hand.
They come, one right after another. I try to squirm away, but my restraints hold me tight. If they had stopped at one, or even five, it would have been bearable, hardly worse than a bad trip to the doctor’s office. But they didn’t stop. They don’t stop. My shoulder, my foot, my neck, over and over again, the needles prick me, diving into oceans of skin and muscle.
Is this what torture feels like? I always imagined the worst part of torture was the pain, but I was wrong; it’s the relentlessness, the utter inescapability.
I wish I knew what I did to deserve this, what I could do to make them stop. But there’s nothing they want from me, not really. I’m nothing more than an oddity to them, a specimen to dissect.
I’m forced to lie on my stomach, and more needles prick the backs of my legs and my upper back. I’m feeling woozy and nauseous, and I’m not sure if it’s from the constant pain or if the needles are injecting me with something.
Finally, I feel the biggest needle so far enter the very middle of my back. I gag as I feel it go in, every muscle in my body tensing up. I gasp a few times, feeling like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. I can’t pull in enough air. My lungs freeze up, refusing to inflate. As my eyelids grow heavy and close, a voice beside me says, “Interesting, this one lasted longer than the others.”