The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

I Am Not These Things You Call Me
by Melissa R. Mendelson 

I heard their screams underwater.  No matter how many dunks of my head down into the bathtub, I couldn’t rinse them out.  Their screams vibrated like angry waves, cold like the air above me, and my ears shook with each word.  Those things they called me were more than skin deep.

I sat up in the bathtub, covering my ears.  Their screams continued.  “These words do not belong to me,” I screamed, but that did not silence them.  “I am not what you call me.”  I dunked my head back under the water, but it did not help.

I sat up in the bathtub again, this time hunching over my knees.  I wanted to cry, but my eyes only shed the water running down my face.  “If only they would listen,” I muttered, but they would not.  “So open to others, but not to me.”

I lied back down and let the water consume me.  Maybe, it was better this way.  Just let go, and not have to worry about what waited outside.  But why should I grant such power to them over me?

“Fuck you,” I roared, spitting water out across the bathroom floor.  “You sheep,” I growled.  “Blindly follow the herd, but I don’t.”

I looked down at the water.  It was once so clear, but now, it was murky.  Brown from the dirt that they had pushed me down into, holding me there as they cut into my skin.  I reached behind me but stopped.  I did not want to touch it, but it was there.  It would now always be there, and if it healed or was covered up, if it couldn’t be seen anymore, they would do much worse to me.  There would be no washing that away.

“I never did anything to you.”  I rested my head against my knees, staring at the closed, locked bathroom door.

I had been in here for too long.  A decision had to be made.  Do I go under and stay there, or do I step out of this bathtub and accept what was done to me?

“Fuck it.”  I reached behind me, letting my fingers trace across the bruises to that spot, that spot where they carved in my fate.  My fingers found it, walking along its edges, and I did not have to search for it in the mirror to know what it looked like.  I’ve seen it before on my brother a couple of weeks ago.

“Antlers,” I said, stepping out of the bathtub.  “Who ever thought that would be the new barcode?”

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Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken.  She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing.  Her short story collections, Better Off Here and Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com