Prompt Fill: Week 2 (Comparing Scars)

"Yo, how'd you get that?" Carl asked his dorm roommate, who was examining a scar on the inside of his right calf.

"What do you think? Hockey, obviously," Luis replied to his roommate that just got back from his Philosophy 202 class.

Carl sat down next to him, "Check this one out," he bragged as he rolled up his shirt to show a larger scar running across his midsection.

"Boxing?" Luis asked for clarification. Carl nodded and dropped his shirt.

"Check this out," Luis said while he showed a deep scar running across his left shin.

"Damn, that's brutal. But not as brutal as this one," Carl said before pointing to the scar that ran across the left side of his face. He would always brag about that scar in particular, because he got it by protecting his now ex-girlfriend in a street fight.

"Oh yea, that thing. What was the story again? Didn't she break up with you two weeks after you got that?"

The mood in the room turned sour by the mention of the break-up. Luis sensed this and apologized.

"Don't worry about it. The break-up was better than the relationship," Carl responded.

"How?"

Carl sighed and looked away from his roommate, as he had never opened up to him like this before, "Well, she was physically abusive. The emotional abuse was worse. She kept me hostage by threatening to commit suicide if I broke up with her. Thankfully she broke up with me." The room filled up with a stillness so thick that not even a knife could cut it. The normal Carl that Luis had always known had more layers to him than Luis thought.

"Yea...my dad left me and my mother was abusive in both of those ways," Luis replied with his own trauma, "What's your opinion on suicide?"

"I'm partial to it. I mean, I've tried committing it before," Carl responded as he rolled up his sleeves to reveal an array of self-inflicted scarring on both of his forearms. A bystander witnessing the event might have thought that the two college students were mimicking the statue outside the dormitory building. With silence encasing the two of them, Luis rolled up his own sleeves to show the self-harm that laid on his own forearms.