The tattoo artist said it was one of the best pieces he’d ever done, but when he asked me why I picked it and where I came up with the image, I couldn’t tell him.
Just that I needed it.
Just that it felt necessary.
Steam starts to creep across the edges of the mirror, and I slip into the shower, letting hot water pelt my skin.
A face flashes in my mind as I lather my body with soap and begin to shampoo my hair. This can’t be the first time the man with mesmerizing eyes and I have crossed paths. It’s too much of a fucking coincidence that he and his friends were there to step in before the meth-head could hurt me last night.
How could they have known I needed help?
There’ve been moments over the last couple years where my skin has prickled oddly, where I’ve had the strange sensation of being watched. But the skin of my damaged arm often prickles where the nerves never healed quite right, and paranoia has been a constant companion as I’ve tried to overcome the lingering PTSD symptoms that followed in the wake of almost dying.
So I never took those odd feelings seriously. I always assumed they were products of my messed up mind, just another thing I would need to eventually overcome if I wanted to live a semi-normal life one day.
But what if it wasn’t all in my head?
What if that wasn’t the first time my path and the men from the club’s have crossed again?
What if last night was only the first time I knew about it?
The next few days are a blur as I stick to my routine: library, work, and then home. Despite my best attempt at pretending everything is fine, I can’t help but jump at every odd noise or any footsteps that seem to follow too closely. And I’m burning through money faster than I should by taking cabs to and from work and to the library.
I don’t want to be alone on the street, although it’s not a mugger I’m afraid of encountering.
It’s the man with the strange eyes.
But several more days pass, and I don’t see any sign of him or the two others who were with him. Slowly, I begin to relax back into my daily life, convincing myself that I’m probably wrong about what I think I saw. It must’ve been a trick of the light that turned the man’s eyes into the strange multi-colored ones I remember from the night I was shot.
It’s not the same guy. It can’t be.
A week after my attempted mugging, I’m back to taking the bus, ready to put the whole fucking thing behind me. I work a temp job in a wealthy neighborhood on the north side of town on Sunday, and by the time I get home, I’m exhausted.
As I walk the couple blocks to my apartment from the bus stop, I tug off my blazer and then undo the harness that secures my prosthetic arm to my body. I’ve been wearing the damn thing for hours, and taking it off feels better than taking a bra off at the end of the day.
I drape the blazer over the crook of my elbow and hold the soft silicone of my prosthesis in my hand, letting the arm dangle from my grip as I approach my building.
As I near it, I notice Natalie coming down the sidewalk from the other direction. Her strawberry blonde hair reflects the waning sunlight in gold highlights, but her sour expression when she catches sight of me ruins the effect.
She’s pretty, but only on the outside.
“Can’t you at least wear that thing like you’re supposed to?” She casts a disparaging look at the fake arm as we both head up the walkway toward our building. “Cover up your stump so the rest of us don’t have to see it?”
I roll my eyes. “Sorry if my debilitating injury makes you uncomfortable.”
She gives an irritated little huff.
I’ve known Natalie for years, since we were in our early teens. We both grew up in the foster system, and our paths crossed periodically as we went in and out of different homes. She moved into the building a little over a year ago, when she started school at the University of Halston. Somehow, she convinced her last foster family to pay for her education, and she’s taken great pleasure in rubbing it in my face ever since.
When we reach the short set of steps leading up to the front entrance of our apartment building, I glance over at her and find her grinning smugly at me.
“Where were you today?” she asks. “The library again?”
“No. Work.”
“Huh.” She laughs lightly. “Which one? The bar or the shitty temp job?”
Irritation burns inside me. “Why do you care?”
She shrugs. “I don’t. I’m just wondering what kind of career you expect to ever have with a resume that lists a diploma from a public library and previous work experience as pouring beers for frat boys and filing papers.”
My teeth grind together. Truthfully, she’s not saying anything I haven’t thought of before on my own, but I don’t want to hear this shit from her. She’s not asking out of concern, or even out of genuine curiosity. She’s asking because she wants to get a rise out of me. She wants to make me feel small so that she can feel bigger.
“I dunno, Nat.” I stop with one foot on the base of the short stairs, turning to face her. “Maybe I’ll get a job banging your mom.”
It’s a stupid fucking joke. Neither of us know who our moms even are, which is how we both ended up in the foster system in the first place. But she annoys me enough that I don’t even care about the quality of my comeback. I just want to get her out of my face so that I can go inside and relax.
Her lip curls in annoyance and disgust as she sucks in a scandalized breath. I turn to head up the stairs, but as I lift my back foot, Natalie reaches out with hers and hooks my ankle, throwing me off balance.
My single hand is already full, and I can’t catch myself on my amputated one, so I go down awkwardly on the stairs, the blazer slipping off my arm as I let out a pained grunt.
The fall didn’t even hurt that bad, but my heart beats harder anyway, anger making my cheeks grow hot. I look back over my shoulder to see Natalie grinning down at me, a cruel glint in her green eyes.
“Ouch. Are you okay, Ayla?” I could almost believe the false concern in her voice if she hadn’t been the one to trip me. “These stairs can be really dangerous. Especially for the disabled.”
All right. That’s e-fucking-nough.
I press away from the stairs, regaining my balance on the cement walkway as my grip tightens on the smooth forearm of my prosthesis. When Natalie steps forward to walk around me, I pivot in place, swinging the silicone arm up in a wide arc. It smacks against the left side of her face—hard—and she stumbles sideways, letting out a yelp of pain and shock.
By the time she regains her equilibrium and turns back to me, I’m standing straight and tall, my prosthesis dangling harmlessly from my loose grip.
There’s a bright red mark across her cheek, and I smile calmly at her as she stares at me with wrath in her eyes.
“That’s the thing about the disabled,” I drawl. “Sometimes you gotta watch the fake hand, not the real one.”
“You—you—” She sputters, obviously more picky about her comebacks than I am, since she doesn’t seem to be able to come up with an appropriate word to call me.
She finally gives up, pressing her lips together in a straight line and glaring at me before turning and stomping up the stairs and into the building. I watch the door slam shut behind her, a small, satisfied smile creeping across my lips.