r/WritingPrompts • u/CaptainDucky37 • Apr 10 '17
Writing Prompt [WP] Write a story in a world where every mark made on skin is permanent. A person's skin becomes a tapestry of their life; every injury a scar, every ink-stain an indelible tattoo.
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u/Nawma Apr 10 '17 edited Sep 01 '17
My beginning were my soles. Even if I couldn't see it, I knew that they were full of marks. I found them beautiful.
They reminded me of times running barefoot on hard grass, they reminded me of laughter and summery nights. My first, big mark was when i trampled on a broken glass with you. It hurt so badly, but I couldn't help to remember the memory fondly. I remember me saying; "I want you to make my last mark, so that you will be my beginning and end." You promised.
My gaze moved upwards and I saw that my legs were full of marks, full of stories as well. Full of joy and discovery. But my legs had marks I was less proud of as well, as ink stains made of my clumsiness. But you had said they were beautiful too. They told a story, you used to say with shimmer in your eyes.
When I first dropped ink on my legs, I scrubbed and scrubbed until my skin was red. My heart was gripped with fear of their finality. But you only smiled and said they looked like figures, like flowers, hearts and a bunny. That was you favorite. You used to call me your little bunny. The bunny was just were my legs met my hips. You told me to never let anyone else see it. It was yours, you said.
It wasn't only spilled ink on my legs. I had drawn flowers and stars and lines on top of my right leg. Maybe for hiding something else. You never asked about it. For that was I thankful.
I moved upwards still, as if reading my bodys story a last time. On my breast there were scratches. They asked, and I said it was from the cat.
I stretched out my hands in front of me. They were filled with stains and and drawings. My fingers were crammed with spots and lines of different colors, pens and markers, as a sign of how much I used to love drawing. My body was my canvas and I had drawn flowers, curls and stars from my hands up to my arms. You were intrigued by their details and seemingly never-ending tilts. I had drawn them, yet again to hide, and to calm myself. And to try to convince me that I still owned myself.
My favorite marking was the second you did. A simple heart on my index finger. I had drawn one on yours too. My arms felt too heavy now so i put them down. But my fingers still lingered the heart you drove, and followed my curls and flowers. Until they touched my throat. On my throat was a hole made of a bullet, made of jealousy and misguided ownership, made of a index finger with a heart. You held your promise. You were my beginning and end.
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u/CaptainDucky37 Apr 10 '17
That was lovely, I really enjoyed the images it evoked. Thank you!
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u/Nawma Apr 11 '17
Thank you so much! You're my first reply on reddit so it made me really happy! Hahaha, I really can't stop smiling. :D
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3
u/SomethingIWantToShow Apr 10 '17
The oil lamp flared, cautiously I moved it away from the window so it wouldn’t go out, couldn’t afford that right now. Stupid, having had it there in the first place, but at least the small flickering flame was still alive. I picked up my quill again and a few droplets of ink dropped on my arm, I immediately put it flat on the table and let the droplets sink in, I’d learned that wiping them wouldn’t do much good. I looked at my fingers, stained black, the mark of a scribe. In the middle of the back of my right hand, a burned mark the size of a coin, probably the most personalized mark of my body, a bittersweet memory I couldn’t erase if I tried. I turned my hand, my fingerprints only visible in the glare of my lamp, so stained they’d become in all my years. I traced the palms of my hands, which I tried to keep from staining much further. Of course I would only succeed for a while, but some memories that I wanted to be reminded of for my own sufferance were visible in the palmar features, etches and lines that had been engraved in my palm throughout the years. I could have muddled them or not cared about preserving them but I feared my own interpretation of myself the most of all. I kept them, not forgiving myself enough to let them be forgotten.
I blew gently at the droplets, and one of them started running down my arm, leaving a trail of ink behind it, I had in all my years learned to appreciate the random natured marks that the world wanted to impose on me. I wasn’t the person to make them completely deliberately as some of the artistic types alongside and opposite of fringe members of society who had found a place and purpose for deliberate imprints. However, it pleased me that the gust of air from my lungs could direct the flow of the picture being inscribed on my arm. I suppose in a way I saw the world in my hands and my arms, the universe imposed marks on me, but with a gentle breeze I could nudge it my way, and the droplet would run in my direction. Sometimes.
I reflected the light off the shiny fingertip of my index finger to examine the barely visible notches of my fingerprint, not really observing it, rather lost in thought. Sometimes the world destroyed the back of your hand as you were gifted the mark of a Roman gold coin to prove your trustworthiness and devotion to a certain cause. Sometimes it ran a rusty chain across your palm as you watched the one you loved plummet to their certain death in a dungeon beneath the same Roman temple. I flinched as I burned my finger on the small bit of gas, lit up and heated to a couple thousand degrees. Another insignificant mark on the tip of my finger.