Her Inked Scars

a party

“Do you need some help?”

A friendly voice calls to me, making me turn my head and brush strands of my hair away just enough that I can see her smiling at me from the door of her parlour, her arms crossed smugly across her chest cloaked in dark fabrics.

I straighten my back and stand, brushing off the pebbles clinging to the fabric of my skirt, feigning a polite smile as I shake my head, turning my back to her as I tug the bucket up, the handle instantly digging in to my already fragile skin, marked red by the sharp plastic.

I lug it down the rest of the stairs and to the gutter in the cobbled street and tip the bucket on its side allowing the water to slush into the gutter, making the old stones shine in the limited sun left as it sets behind the crammed shops and apartments.

Collecting the bucket and turning back for the shop, I find her still staring at me. We briefly lock eyes and she smirks at me before turning back into her shop, the heavy door closing behind her as she flicks the neon lights in her shop off and turns the sign to closed. It suddenly dawns on me that I don’t even know her name despite her shop being open nextdoor for a few months now as I curse quietly to myself about her creepy behaviour.

She does that a lot.

Anytime I have to do an errand outside the shop or I’m on my break out back, she’s there.

She never usually talks to me and just smokes one of her disgusting cigarettes, contaminating the air and clogging my lungs that already struggle to work. We just smile at each other and I always try to ignore her and her eyes that are always fixated on me until I go back inside. I’ve complained about it to the other workers in the florists but they brush it off as her just trying to be friendly and me being paranoid.

My spine shivers with discomfort as I recall her grin. Sure it doesn’t seem menacing at first, it’s actually quite soothing, it’s just how often she does it, usually without saying a word to me or even trying to speak. It has made me feel a bit better though to know that she does at least speak when she wants too.

I finish up my errands to close the shop and go into the backroom, undoing the loose knot of my apron and removing the itchy fabric of it from around my neck, hanging it on the line of hooks beside its brethren before sitting at the old dining table, picking at the flaking white paint that had been brushed on years ago with my nail as some other workers join me, giggling between each other as I zone out.

“Hey, Nyoka,” Grace calls to me, snapping me out of the mind rabbithole I’d been scurrying down.

I wave absentmindedly back, noticing them both shrug through my peripheral. I try to ignore the clack of Grace’s heeled shoes on the tiled floor of the staffroom as I ready myself for my trek home, made extra difficult by the construction occurring everywhere in this town which makes my walk home even longer since I have to take a round-a-bout route. Getting my steps in for the day, I suppose.

As I get up and reach for my bag, Grace appears beside me, somehow silencing her footsteps enough to sneak up and jump scare me. I force a weak smile with my depleting social energy as she begins babbling about something I really don’t care about but it feels too rude to try and step away or even reach for my bag and coat.

“...So are you going to go?” She asks, peaking my attention.

“Hmm?”

“The party. At the tattoo parlour next door,” Izzy chimes in, sipping on a mug of freshly brewed tea in her hands.

“Uhh…”

“Come on!” Grace pleads, tugging on my sleeve. “It’ll be so fun!”

“I think you and I have very different definitions of that word,” I respond. Grace is a party girl so of course she’d think going to a party next door would be fun, not considering how little I enjoy being around people, especially larger crowds.