Page 27 of Pray for Scars
“You’re lucky, you know,” she says, winking at me as a real smile forms on her powdered face as she shifts her gaze to a man beside me. A man with a gold watch on his wrist, a blue suit. He’s signing papers, and she continues, “Reverend Wilson is going to give you a beautiful new life, hon.”
The darkness is still behind me, moving as I move, as my hand slips into Reverend Wilson’s. As he buckles my seatbelt, smooths down my skirt, his hand lingering on my knobby knee. He smiles at me, but I can’t see it. I only see him from the neck down. Only see the hollow of his throat.
He gets into his car, shuts the door.
The darkness is beside me.
The darkness is an angel.
We drive up a mountain. I close my eyes, scared of the altitude. I sleep in Wilson’s bed, when he lets me sleep. When he doesn’t, I stare at the ceiling as he moves above me. There’s no pain.
He doesn’t try that.
My angel is gone.
But then I see the hollow of Wilson’s throat again. He’s sleeping, loud snores deafening in his dark room, a cross above his bed.
I have a knife in my hand. Pulled from the kitchen.
I stand at the head of his bed.
The knife goes in easier than I thought it would, my entire 8-year-old body leaning against it. I climb on top of the bed as he wakes up, his hand going to his throat.
I straddle him, digging the blade in deeper.
Blue lights. Then red.
Days pass and I’m in front of the woman with glasses again. She isn’t disgusted anymore.
She’s terrified.
The dark angel is here. I don’t know his name.
A man with blonde hair and eyes so blue they make my breath catch looks from the woman in glasses, to me, and back again.
“Take care of it.” His words are cold. Venomous.
“But sir,” the woman says as the man turns to go, the angel behind me, just out of view, “she…she is not okay.”
The man with blonde hair and blue eyes glares at the woman, not sparing me another glance. “I saidtake care of it.”
I turn around, watch the man walk out.
Behind him, my dark angel morphs into a gangly boy, all arms and legs, a mop of honey-colored hair, a golden face, his pale eyes on me, a frown on his full lips.
I want to follow him.
He doesn’t move until the man snaps his fingers and says,“Filius. We’re leaving,” through gritted teeth.
A string of families, some worse than the first, none as good as they should be. There’s a fire. More than one. I’m always standing on the lawn when the house erupts in flames.
I’m always out of harm’s way when the accidents happen.
There’s an older boy with green eyes I see one day when I’m leaving the woman with the glasses, my hand in another man’s.
The boy’s eyes find mine through the crowd of people waiting in line.
He doesn’t smile.
