Scar
by Otto Burnwell
The
wound is crusting over,
but
the damage will remain,
and
a scar that will bind him
to
the woman he betrayed.
Standing
nearly naked
in
the hallway at a mirror,
he
traces with his finger
where
she tried to take his balls.
Missed
the femoral artery
and
opened up his knee.
Doctor
said he’ll limp awhile
but
should be good as new.
Skin
will twist and harden
to
cover meat and bone,
but
his nerves will give a shiver
to
touch another blade.
It
comes like dullish pulsing,
blood
dashing through his veins,
to
feel that fucking razor
slicing
through his flesh again.
The
sight of all that blood
gave
them both a feral shock.
She
only meant to scare him,
afraid
he’d laugh away her rage.
Then
full of cruel bravado,
she
licked the bloody steel
and
skinned a layer from her tongue
while
he curled up, crimson on the floor.
His
pals tell him, dump her.
He
often thinks he should.
But
when she calls him to the bedroom,
he
can’t help but go to join her.
What
makes him choose to stay?
She
claimed him for herself
and
marked him with a scar,
a
brand he'll always wear.
Two
sad and lonely people
let
lust and jealous rage
take
hold and bind them
in
an angry fist of love.
Otto is riding out
the pandemic in a densely populated, urban area, with a few million of his
closest neighbors, wondering how much pain we can inflict on each other and
still call it love. This piece comes out of that.
He writes to stay sane, uses a pseudonym to stay employable, and changes enough
detail in what he writes to stay welcome at the family’s holiday gatherings—in
some future to be named later.
He’s recently placed pieces with Terror House Magazine; Horror,
Sleaze, Trash; The Oddville Press; Fiction on the Web, The
Stray Branch, and Yellow Mama.
W. Jack Savage is a retired broadcaster and educator. He is the author of eight books
including Imagination: The Art of W. Jack Savage (wjacksavage.com). To
date, more than fifty of Jack’s short stories and over a thousand of his paintings
and drawings have been published worldwide. Jack and his wife Kathy live in Monrovia, California.
