Scarred

I had never been much of a shower person. I’d always preferred the still, warm water of the bathtub and the mounds of fluffy bubbles that accumulated on the surface. People were always telling me how weird I am, that I am literally stewing in my own filth, but I just brushed them off. I didn’t tell them that the real reason I hated showers was that I didn’t want to look down at my naked self, transformed from the body of a boy to one giant gaping, pulsating wound. It wasn’t as if the others in the asylum didn’t have scars, too, in fact, most of them looked like they’d been through a warzone, some even with missing eyes or noses, but for me it was the memories that came with each scar.

There were some like the tiny scar in the crook of my elbow that got bigger every time my little sister came to visit. She would go on and on about life outside the institute, about her friends and school and the life I was no longer apart of. Then there were scars like the one stretching all along my back. That one was from my father, the one who had left me for dead, the one that had cut out the backbone of my life.

Unfortunately, there were more scars like the latter. Like the ones that still bleed on my palms and reach out up my forearms. Those were from when I killed Thom. Or the deep cut on the inside of my thigh. That one I didn’t like to think about. Or the star shaped cut over my heart. That one was from when I killed my best friend. Silas… Silas… Silas…

This is why I don’t take showers. Because I end up thinking I should be dead.