A Cut

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Last updated 2016-08-23 12:22:12 SGT

You slink over to the washroom — leaving behind a trail of red splatters — to see what happened, because you don't feel anything. Only when you stick your hand under water to clean out the wound do you realise that it's actually deep because holy what the actual fuck that stings; for a while you stand there stupidly, clamping down with your good hand, going back and forth because the taps shut off every three seconds to save water, and every time you loosen up your grip to check how it's doing the sides of the sink spatter red. When the bleeding stops, you're actually disappointed by how small the wound is — small, but deceptively deep.

It gets in the way, at least at first. You can't hold on to a pull-up bar properly for the next two weeks. It hurts to type, but then you don't get to do that in camp anyway. A band-aid is no excuse to stand up and do Buddha claps when everyone else's getting tekan'd. By the time they give you your gun, you're not wearing one any more. By the time you leave the damn island, that missing chunk of you has grown back. If you hadn't written down that it happened, you probably would have forgotten.

And, in point of fact, you do — until it happens again. Same knife, even. You are suddenly reminded.

You're not even sure which finger you'd sliced open, for a while. But then your eyes fall on where there was a hole in your finger, and there it is still; there it is now: a hole in your fingerprint, though small enough to escape notice unless you were to look for it.

Yet it is there.


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