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Joanna X
Introduction
This is a short fiction piece (roughly 300 words) about the beginning of a young woman's troubles: Some traumatic incident writhes beneath her skin... but she doesn't know this yet.
Trigger warning. If you're sensitive to topics of abuse or suicide, I don't recommend reading this.
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Joanna X
She wakes up in the tub, cold water from the showerhead washing the blood from her body. It circles toward the drain underneath her, but she doesn't know that yet. She's only remotely aware that she is alive because she can feel heat slicing through her wrists. Everything else is brightness and numbness and pinpricks of cold raising gooseflesh on the bareness of her skin.
The panic would come later, when her mother barged in after Joanna didn't respond to her inquiries. She would scream and they would cry together. Her mother would ask her why she did this to herself, and she would vehemently deny that it had been her. She would claim to have been possessed, perhaps visited by aliens; she'd seek the help of priests and believers to validate her denial. They would tell her instead what she did not want to hear. She would be urged to see a therapist. There were demons, they'd tell her, and there were aliens experimenting on the unsuspecting - but she, poor Joanna, she was simply traumatized and suppressing the memory of whatever it is that had happened, whatever it was that she'd seen or that had been done to her.
Doctors would tell her that whatever it was, it would come back to her eventually. Perhaps violently. She would remember, and probably all at once. Something would trigger the memories and it would be painful. It would be gut-wrenching. It would be devastating. Without the guidance and careful monitoring of a psychiatrist, it could be catastrophic.
But she does not know any of this yet. For now she remembers intending to have a shower, but she does not recall undressing or turning the knob for cold water. For now, her ignorance is genuine. All that remains of before is the urgency to lather and scrub and shave. The urgency to feel clean again.
~
