Opening:
Grace does not know when the rot started. A part of her believes it had always been there, nestled somewhere in her body, her bones, deep in her organs maybe, festering.
For the first twelve years of her life she does not notice, looking back she’d like to say part of her always knew but that would be a lie.
It is only then, a few days before her thirteenth birthday she sees it, a small patch of aged, slightly yellow skin on her chest. It’s warm to the touch, unnaturally so, as though she were running a fever on that one plot of discoloured flesh.
She runs to her mother, as any child in distress would, and should be able to.