Ground Two

When Tissue Burns

Lumina lay on her bed. Her hands lay, neatly folded, on top of her abdomen. Her eyes are stuck on the ceiling. The burn on her cheek throbs. An image, a scene, and a memory continually plays in her mind. Lumina closes her eyes to feel the full effect of the pain.

There's a still image of a man. His one hand is balled into a fist and is coming straight for her. The other is behind him and clutches a torch. An angry expression smears his face: teeth bared, brows furrowed, and nostrils flared. But in the distance, a policeman comes rushing forwards, his one hand is wrapped around a black whistle while his other hand is straight out, palm flat. He's running towards Lumina's attacker.

The image fades to black.

A scene cuts in.

Lumina evades the man's fist by quickly holding up her palm. The impact rattles the bones in her hand. Pain surfaces.

The man snorts.

The cop's whistle emits an ear-piercing shriek.

Lumina turns to run.

The man catches Lumina by the wrist. Lumina risks a glance back. The man lashes his torch, like a whip, against Lumina's cheek. A new pain, pricks like that of a thousand needles, stabs at her cheek.

Lumina bites back a pain filled cry.

The officer intervenes.

The angry man drops his torch, a grin now plastered upon his lips, as the officer readjusts his hands behind his back. The man is then pinned to the ground, the officer kneeing him in the back.

"You deserve that scar! You NASA folk who left us stranded on this drifting half of the world," the man yelled, finishing his sentence by spitting on Lumina's boot.

The policeman slips a piece of duct tape across the man's mouth. "Anything you say can, and will, be used against you," the officer says.

The man rolls his eyes, as if he's heard it before.

The officer looks up at Lumina, breathing heavily. His dark, round face produces a concerned expression, his brown eyes catching sight of the burn on Lumina's face. "You alright ma'am?"

Lumina stares at the officer for a moment, and then answers. "I'm fine. It's nothing I can't handle."

The scene fades.

The memory replaces it.

A young Lumina - the age of 8 - wraps her index finger and thumb around a candle's burning wick.

"Ow!" Lumina cries, and sticks her burnt fingers in her mouth.

Her father looks up from his computer screen. "What's ow?" he asked.

Lumina hesitantly coaxed her fingers from her mouth. They were a decent shade of bright pink when she showed them to her father. Her father quickly glanced at the now smoking candle and back at Lumina. The smile on his lips grew.

Lumina's father rose from his tattered leather desk chair and walked towards her. He took her by the unburnt hand, leading her into the bathroom. He quickly rummaged through the medicine cabinet, eventually pulling out some aloe cream. "Good for burns," her father read off the back.

Lumina was directed to sit on the edge of the bathtub. Her father knelt before her, a thick line of the clear cream on his index finger. Lumina's father took hold of her hand, and gently applied the aloe to the burn. Cool relief flooded her sore, burnt fingers.

The memory faded.

Lumina opened her eyes, a fresh feeling of warmth igniting deep in her blood cells, then into her tissues, organs, and muscles. It wasn't happiness.

It was anger.

Tomorrow morning, she thought, operation: STITCH will commence.