literature

Love is a Myth

Deviation Actions

Razgriz-3's avatar
By
Published:
576 Views

Literature Text

Love is a myth.
The words were on the skin of my right ankle, formed from scar tissue. They had been there for as long as I could remember, although I did not remember what, exactly, put them there. A movement of my young hands, maybe, guided by a force I could not feel. A doctor with a bitter sense of humor. Broken glass with a mind of its own.
Whatever the cause, it never really mattered much to me. It was just another birthmark, albeit an oddly-shaped one; it had been there forever, so I thought nothing of it. In fact, no one else learned of its existence until I turned ten.
My mother did, then, as she helped me take off a particularly clingy pair of socks.
"Arnold, what's this on your ankle?"

I had giggled, and said, "My lucky mark!"

My mother's brow furrowed, and she told me that she thought it looked like Cuba. I learned later that other people couldn't see the words that I could see.

The name "lucky mark" stuck. I called it that well into my adulthood, or at least to myself when I referred to it in my thoughts.

Throughout my immediate childhood, meaning birth to age twelve, I had no idea as to the meaning of the words tattooed on my ankle. I learned when I hit middle school.
We had moved from the lovely, quiet little neighborhood that I loved to a new, large one that I hated to be closer to Dad's new job. I left a friend I had had since I was born, who I loved dearly as well and was thrown into a mob of unfamiliar children who regarded me with hard eyes and uncaring hands. Love is a myth.


The words changed on the first day of school. "The heart is a weak muscle anyway."
The change scared the hell out of me. Young as I was, I could understand that something was deeply wrong, but not so wrong that I would go see the doctor, who I was secretly afraid of.

Again, the words were lost upon me, but a sense of foreboding appeared with the change in words. I didn't even link moving and the change, but the baseless feeling stayed. I began to draw pain like a magnet; I often tripped and hurt myself, or stepped on nails, or had a door opened in my face.

I was wary of making friends for fear of their contracting my luck. I also worried about the words on my leg, that somehow if they weren't predicting the death of a new friend, they were predicting the death of a family member or something similar. I sat on my lonesome on the bus home. If someone came and sat next to me, I would move or ignore them altogether. Not that many did; the weird-looking, beat-up kid with blond hair and strange eyes that looked like someone had dropped ink in them didn't really appeal to many sensibilities.

People thought I was aloof, too, despite the fact I just didn't want to endanger anyone.
It was a pointless attempt, because I was going about the words the wrong way. I thought someone else would keel over from heart failure. So when I was hit by a car on my way back from school, the driver speeding off into the distance as if nothing had happened, the ankle-words were the last things on my mind. They continued to be the last things on my mind as I walked home with a bruised shoulder and crushed arm, and didn't even appear in my mind until my parents brought me to the hospital. Then, they surfaced in my mind like a piece of a broken ship before quickly sinking again, taking my consciousness with them.


I woke up to see one of the doctors, a man with bulging eyes and a white coat, arguing explosively with my mother. I was sedated from the pain, but noticed with some irritation that my arm wasn't bandaged. Quack doctors…
"Hey. Shaddup," I sat up and muttered.

They both stared at me as if I were a gremlin. I passed out again.


I awoke sometime later to find a large hole in my chest. I almost passed out again before I realized that there was no hole, but a large, dark-red blot on my shirt. Which, in retrospect, wasn't much better, but I was just glad someone hadn't taken a drill to my torso.

Or had they? Touching the blot caused arcs of pain, although it didn't hurt when not touched, but I rolled my shirt down to where the source of the bar should have been anyway.

There was a metal rivet through the place where my heart was.
I regarded it with a mixture of curiosity and surprise, but not panic. There was no use in panicking, as I was either viewing the truth or was most certainly dead. Neither of which really appealed to me.

A doctor walked into the room, the same one that had been arguing with my mother earlier.
"Good. You're up. Care to explain?" he said.

I stared at him in minor confusion, and responded, "There's a rivet through my chest?"
"Through your heart, or where your heart should be. It's hooked up to all your veins. Have you been aware of it before today?"

I blinked. "Nope."


They sent me home a few days later with a cast on my arm and a case of sleep deprivation. I slept for nearly an entire day, and then it was time for school. Trying not to avoid everyone was a tough decision to get used to. The other students had continued thinking I was aloof, and I had a hell of a time trying to reintegrate myself. Eventually, I just gave up. I wasn't like anyone else, though, which alarmed me. I was a literally heartless boy with a possessed ankle and a broken arm. No one asked why it was broken.
The words changed again. "Watch your step."


The next day I fell into a manhole and broke my other arm. I was preoccupied running from a tall man with a beard and a short man with a machete. Since we had moved to the new neighborhood that I hated, the days had grown quickly from unpleasant to horrible to strange to, for lack of a better word, stupid. Stupid because men I had never met were trying to murder me for no discernable reason, stupid because the words on my skin had changed again, stupid because the doctors had told me the next time in the hospital that the birthmark on my skin was a skin graft from a dead girl. I had been born minus an anklebone, and for whatever reason, they decided to use a skin graft from a recently deceased donor. I was actually amazed they were able to find the records; it was such a random curiosity (or so it seemed to them) about such an unimportant bit of skin that it really wasn't worth their attention.

And yet it was recorded. The dead girl's name was Gwen.

The words changed after the incident. "Cut and converse," they said. I complied, using a handheld blue pocket knife. And they held weight. Every word I sliced into my legs appeared to someone, and the same someone changed the words on my ankles in response.
My ankle was possessed, although it was more of a telephone than a coffin. Gwen could change the words to say things. I suppose she was able to predict my future, but I know not.

The day after my conversing with her, the words changed and stayed so. In asking what they meant, I received no answer. They said "Look both ways."
I found them in the shower that morning. After showering, I put on clothes, grabbed my backpack, and then began walking to school, brooding on exactly what the words meant.
I was then hit by a bus in an attempt to cross the street. The words had been a warning, but they actually damned me.


And then I woke up.


"That was just goddamn weird," I muttered to myself. Checking my alarm clock told me it was a bit past two in the morning, but I wasn't getting back to sleep, nor did I want to. Not after that dream, at least. They were becoming all too common lately, involving death and a girl with a fuzzy face and a name just out of reach.

I fled to the bathroom in an attempt to keep from dozing off, splashing water in my face and drying it with a towel. I was going to go back to my room and read or something, but I noticed something odd.

There was something on my ankle. Words. They said: "Goodbye, Arnold. Don't worry. Gwen'll see you real soon."

I couldn't make any sense of them. My name wasn't Arnold.
This story started decently and quickly grew out of control. I cut it off a bit early before any actual direction could be found. This could have been quite good, but instead, I think, turned out rather badly. Maybe I'll redo it later. Jeeze, this is a strange one. The main character, Arnold, almost became a...what's the word when your character has too many strange bits about him? I can't remember. Whatever it was, he almost became it.

This is unedited, and should be positively bristling with mistakes.

I ask you not to think less of me because of this one. I'm working on a different story and needed to finish this one.

Note! Edited. The ending is different now, but it doesn't make much more sense. I still don't much like it.
© 2012 - 2024 Razgriz-3
Comments355
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Before-Reasoning's avatar
I quite like this one. :meow: Very creative, where'd you get the idea?