Selfish Secrets
Salt. Sweat. The last reminders of terror dreams and the bite of bitterness. The fabric clings, sticky as he stumbles free of the sheets, his gaze blearily drifting across dark skin. The choking pressure at the back of his mouth is driving, beckoning him deeper into his quarters, fingers crooked. Fingers down his throat.
Slender, mangled hands brace against the counter, breath sharp and uneven. Seaside air is cool on bare flesh, drifting across nerves still alight from sleep. The mirror glitters glassy, his reflection dull against the memory of who he is to the world. Flecks of gold in green are nearly swallowed by the dilation of dark pupils, black twists dangle half out of their bindings like a tangle of ropey snakes. He looks thin bare before himself, where he can follow the jut of clavicle and high cheekbones press against skin, fighting to be free. Glass is cold beneath his touch as he traces his reflection, following bones and the slope of a long nose with the tips of too-thin digits. Dark ink seeped into his skin in careful replication shifts with the flex of his fingers, impressions slithering beneath his skin like corpse flies, sucking at the air. Hungry, threatening to break past the thin film of scar tissue bubbled up between sigil lines.
The caress trails from cupid’s bow to the part of his lips and pauses. The Cheshire smile is jagged and uneven, lopsided like always enjoying half a joke and extending beyond the way his wrist pivots to obscure. Too long, too curved, a cruel mockery of a jester’s grin.
It shouldn’t matter. Those who held the blade are long since gone, and were they not, likely to have forgotten him many years past. He wouldn’t know their faces. They were little more than remnants of his history, marks and marrings that chronicle a life.
Beautiful, he was told. With and without them. A talented hand could remove them entire, leave skin clean and smooth, but the idea frightens him as much as it draws. He has always been the sum of his history, unabashed and disgusted both. Even without them, the memory of their imprints would remain.
It’s breathtaking. You’re breathtaking.
When his lips split beneath his fingers in the mirror his laugh is low and broken, the curl of a thing full of disdain. They see the jagged scarring long healed, another thing conquered—
He can still feel the bite of stone into his back and shoulders, the dizzying crack of skull against rotted wood. The world smells of a sewer and the blood of his brothers slicks his fingers too slippery to offer him purchase on dirty fabric and bodies stronger than he would ever be. Teeth clacking, the frantic clip of words in a bite cut short by a hand in his mouth to stretch his jaw wide as steel slips sweetly against the inside of his cheek. They meant to take his tongue, but boots on the street bid them leave him and his brothers in their own mess.
Beneath his fingers he can see split flesh and thready meat not wholly severed, baring teeth too high and painting his jaw in scarlet. Ugly. Raw.
Breathtaking.
Adebayo’s fingers slip away as the smell of the sea returns, and he draws a deep breath. Air on bare skin is cool and sharp and pulling him further into his present. His tongue touches the backs of his teeth, wets his lips, stares at the jester’s grin.
This bitter, broken nation is full of wretched, ugly things. Turns them into something beautiful.
The vase beside his bed cradles a treasure that flourishes, and his fingers trail lightly over the edge of a petal. Delicate. Pretty. Dangerous and secretive. Perfect despite that it should not even be.
With resolution he pulls the mask on again, the magic tingling across his skin like the familiar slip of a lover’s touch. Settled beneath the fine attire he dons, the illusions pull close like armor. Beloved, to hide the monstrousness beneath as supple smiles and beckoning fingers obscure the rot set deep.They will not understand. They will not understand.
