“The winning entry of the just ended #iWriteArt Artist + Writer Contest ● Artwork by @stormterry • Flash fiction by @alexwrites.
SCARIFICATIONS
I’m sitting in the lecture-theater, patiently anticipating the lecturer’s grand entry, when Bash enters. He clambers up the steps until he reaches my row and squeezes past after greeting me perfunctorily.
The seat next to me is empty so he drops onto it. Out of the corner of my left eye, I steal furtive glances at him as he converses with Marie-Ann, my ravishing crush, from whom I’d purposefully ensured to be two seats away.
I detest the charismatic way in which Bash makes her small bouts of laughter erupt like spurts from a fresh spring.
And then, an inundating sadness envelops me as I remember the reason for my grim social-life: the four horizontal lines deeply etched on my cheeks, like cat-whiskers.
From infancy, my face has been my greatest undoing. I’ve had to work on my pictures before uploading them to social networks.
Sometimes I’m called ‘sergeant’ because I bear the stripes of a policeman’s rank on my cheeks.
For these reasons, when people are nice to me, I become inadvertently hostile, believing them to be condescending. Who are they to offer pity? What do they have that I lack (besides a face free of tribal marks)? I cannot approach Marie-Ann because the last girl I dared to was disgusted and screamed obscenities at me, as though I’d had spit drooling out of my mouth? And so, I’m yet to have my first girlfriend.
Suddenly, a thought hits me: Marie-Ann is probably unprejudiced.
Now, Bash squeezes past me again and saunters out of the theater. Recognizing this as an opportunity, I move over to the seat he’s just vacated.
The stare Marie-Ann gives me is so cold that it freezes over the memorized words I intend to say. I swallow them and retreat to my former position, embarrassed.
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