Indelible
By: Kawira Koome
Tags: Short Story, Creative Writing, Kenyan, Fiction, Writing Prompts

I've always known how to live in unknown corners of the earth. I've always known how to make a small world huge. I've always known how to be a needle in a haystack.

Don't ask me how I know. There's no class for this. There's no apprenticeship. No mentorship. No reference. Just whispers.

Like what the doctor said when I was born. Like what my mother never said. Like what my father hoped for, naming me after his favorite bird.

Whispers, and mirrors.

It was in the eyes of everyone who saw me. No, not contempt. Not hatred. A strange... jealousy. Why should she get to be free? Why should she be different? Am I not a child of God too?

Who am I to answer such a question? How could I possibly fight the looks in their eyes, the silent violence in their stance?

I learned how to hide.

I don't know if anyone ever tried looking for me, or if they tried and failed. I am still hiding. It hurts.

I didn't choose this. I cringe at sounding like a victim. I'm a freak of genetics. An anomaly. An unwelcome prophet in my own land. It is written on my skin. Or rather, it isn't.

I make people's eyes squirm, their skin itch. There is a clear and obvious wrongness about me. It is the stuff of nightmares, the story that children are told to stop their misbehaving.

"If you do that again, the devil will come and erase you."

If I was born in another time, I would be venerated. People like me were acts of God, proof of His power, unshakeable evidence of His will. A true blank slate. A reminder of His grace.

But now, my blankness is profanity. A hex. Proof of the devil. A sign of the end of the world. Revelation in flesh and blood.

Others feel. It is plain as day. It marks their bodies. Intricate patterns, delicate like fingerprints. From the first breath of a newborn, the first cry, the marks begin. They keep humanity in check: too many marks too soon, and the Authorities come for the parents. Abuse, neglect, fear, written for all the world to see.

Nobody can hide their marks. You cannot unlive your life. You cannot mask your lust and greed and hunger and excitement and love and terror. It must be brutal living like that. No alternatives have ever been found, no chemicals, no legislation, no campaigns, no technology, no amount of faith. The unscrupulous few take advantage: they can read your flaws and turn them into money. They can sell you uppers, downers, blinders, effacers... They work perfectly. They expose you. More imprints means more insecurity means more drugs. Foolproof.

Until someone like me comes along. There must be plenty of us, hiding in odd places. It is a fact of nature. Mutants must exist. I am not green or purple. I am dark like the rest of my people. My hair is hard and springy like the rest of my people. My eyes are a deep brown, my teeth are white. I am normal by all standards, except one.

My skin is smooth. I have no markers. No imprints. None.

They say I cannot feel. I must be a psychopath. My parents tried everything. My father was quite good at drawing the intricate patterns on my face and arms and legs, which would smudge when I sweat and wash off in the bath. My mother was quite good at dressmaking, learning to cover every possible inch of my skin with fabric, without calling more attention to me than necessary.

Nothing worked.

They made their choice. Last I heard, they had two more children, perfectly normal. Marked like everyone else.

They left me by the edge of the woods. They left me to God. Or to death.

They say I cannot feel. I have no marks to prove it. What use are words if my skin won't testify too? They don't understand that I feel too much. I feel everything. My skin can't take it. My marks would bleed otherwise.

My first month of life was red. My every pore leaked blood. The doctors had seen nothing like it. I don't blame them. People like me belong in myths, not labs. The solution was simple, if anyone had paid enough attention. Relocation.

I was born in a slum. The noise, the smell, the violence, the fear, the dust, the heat of the iron sheet shack in the day and its cold in the night, it all made me bleed. We could have simply moved. A quieter place. Cleaner air. Thicker walls between neighbors. Or neighbors much farther away. No neighbors even. But we couldn't afford it. Mother wiped me clean, Father prayed over me, but they stayed put.

In a month, I stopped bleeding. I stopped crying. I slept through the night for the first time. I stopped fussing. My parents could have friends over to see their new baby now. Until one of them noticed my tiny hands and feet.

"They're perfectly smooth."

I was five when my parents surrendered. I couldn't be hidden any longer. I couldn't be swathed from head to toe forever.

The trees raised me. The grass led my feet. The birds fed me. The wild dogs protected me.

I feel everything. Even their language.

At night I venture out into the city, to the slum that made me as I am. Finally, I can walk where my people walk. They are all inside. Some disease is keeping them indoors every night. I stroll happily, my face uncovered. Small joys. Limited joys, because they still fight, indoors. They hate more than ever now. They die every day. Crimes of passion, they call it. Suicides.

I cannot last half an hour. I run back into the woods and cry and cry. The trees murmur and shush me. The dogs curl up in my lap and warm me to sleep.

And so I move. I find other edges of the woods, I cross towns and cities and villages, always in the night, searching for...

Not shelter. Nature is my home. Not peace. Not adventure. Something else drives me forward. Something else makes me tread amongst the marked ones every chance I get.

I'm searching for an eye that will meet mine without shock or contempt or envy. I want to know that I am known. I seek someone like me. Because if I exist, they do too. They have to. If I lose this hope, I will die.