Page 8 of The Harbinger
My finger skimmed her hip as she continued turning, giving me her skeletal back.
Each rib was attached to a vertebra that stuck out like the rest of the bones in her body. Her sinful addiction ate away at her until she was nothing but a hollow shell of the person she once was.
My finger stopped along her spine, and my heart struck like a war drum against my chest.
There, along her ribcage, were a cluster of ordinary freckles anyone might overlook, but to me…
I traced the primordial design with repudiation, my finger touching each one as if it needed a connection, and noted the creamy, unblemished skin within its bounds.
Despite the trauma to her body, her back remained untouched.
She finished her circle when my finger fell off her rib, touching the last of the shape.
“I told you.” Her voice shuddered as I tipped my head. “I have nothing.”
Her cracked lips pressed together.
“Take out your lip piercing.”
Her fingertips touched the bar just below the lined swell of her plump lower lip. When she flicked her gray eyes to mine, she shook her head.
I stepped forward, and she retreated. “I- I don’t know how.”
“You put it in, didn’t you?”
Her back pressed against the shower door with a slight rumble. “I-I don’t—”
“—Remember? You keep saying that.”
I swiped her hand out of the way. “Relax.” My slacks tightened as she swallowed hard. “Open your mouth.”
Mia’s lips parted slowly, showing me perfect white teeth—another oddity in her story. A homelesscokeaddict with white teeth and amnesia. The only things that screamed the truth were her clothes and dirt-stained skin.
Dipping my finger into her mouth, I pressed on the back of the stud, pushed the bar further from her lip, and spun the ball off the threads until it came away.
I tossed the jewelry in the trash embedded in the cupboard.
“Your ring.”
She pulled her hand to her chest and covered it with the other. “But it’s not mine.”
There’s one answer.
“Whose is it?”
“My friends.”
I held my hand out, and the ring slid from her finger as she pulled.
“And what’s your friend’s name?”
“Jenny.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. “Get in the shower.”
Mia’s finger pressed into the vacant hole in her lip as she turned and stepped past the shower door like an obedient doll.
The ground beneath us shuttered, and Mia squealed, her hands shooting out to the shower walls to steady herself while I turned the cold water on her. Another squeak from her delicate throat escaped as she sunk in on herself, shrinking away from the water.