Blueblood

Sort of a retelling of something that's already been written. Actually, it's not. It's the same thing, but in a darker parallel universe which I am more inclined to describe, even if vaguely.

The mental doctor in the Psych Ward has hands the color of milk.

When he keeps them to himself and holds still enough, I can see the bruise of veins, blue like smudged ballpoint ink, smeared across the backs of them. I read somewhere that blue bloods are royal. His hands are a roadmap of royalty.

The room we share once a week is so large that I'd rather not fill it with my words. The walls, paneled in scholarly picture frames, only accept his, but I am a good friend to silence and the way it hides me so well from him. I know he records my voice in his little black box beneath the desk, that he has not yet caught it begging like it should.

He is eager. He grips his noble lineage around the back of my stubble-swathed head when I'm too slow to speak, because the microphone has no eyes, has not woken up. He grips it. He grips me. The blood in my heart is red and fast as a pauper's. A thief's, a street fighter's. A dirty sack-wearing liar, pounding-sweet and bitter-boiled.

"You need help," he tells me.

And I nod into his palm, because I read somewhere that he's a blue blood. I saw it myself, straight as a column in his slim-trunked wrist. Stemming from his bone-tight knuckles. Snaking like a worm against his temple when he stares. It is far worse for me to refuse.

I'm supposed to be the pauper, dark-skinned, hot and red blooded. I defer, I kiss the floor at his feet, I laugh at the hold I have over princes and kings.

He makes me kneel, grips his nobility around the back of my stubble-swathed head, pushes hard. He thinks that in kneeling I will eat from his hand, that I will run the welcome roughness of my tongue across his clean, white-smelling fingers, that I will lap up the milk he spills from me, and still weep afterward.

He thinks paupers can't kill a prince to take his place. He thinks the hospital has emptied my mind, made sure I am weaponless.

I tuck the bladed thoughts away into my pockets, wrap them carefully inside sheaths of napkins, because my face is pressed below his navel and if I keep thinking I will forget to breathe, to work my mouth into worship.

He needs me.

Author's Note

Read it carefully, and let yourself go there.

Reviews

[Mercedes]

Wow. I honestly don't know what to think. This is just amazing. Your descriptions are so detailed. When I read this, it felt like I WAS the narrator. Very gripping. I like the last paragraph best, I think, the first part of it. "I tuck the bladed thoughts away into my pockets, wrap them carefully inside sheaths of napkins..." It's like the narrator intends to use the thoughts to kill the person. Very amazing. You are a stellar writer. Keep up the good work!