Don't Touch The Stitches

By: Winter Ashwood

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

I woke on a metal table with stitches around my throat and a man leaning over me, calling me a name that didn't fit.

My husband said there had been an accident. He said the grafts were necessary, that the scars would heal, that I should rest and take my medicine and stop asking questions about the locked rooms and the servants who wouldn't meet my eyes.

But my body knew things I didn't. My right hand played piano with thirty years of muscle memory that wasn't mine. My legs stretched into ballet positions while I slept. My throat opened at night and sang in languages I had never studied.

I stopped taking the medicine. And the things my body remembered got worse.

The stitches circled my throat. My wrists. My thighs. Every joint a seam. Every seam a border between skin that was mine and skin that wasn't. My husband called it healing. My body called it something else entirely.

He built me to be grateful. He didn't expect me to start remembering.