The Affliction, A Short Story

She woke up to another day. A bland breakfast which she put down with some water. Then over to the mirror to have a look at herself. Perhaps the nightmare had miraculously been lifted.  Perhaps the curse had been reversed. But no. She was branded for life. As if whoever had created her had forgotten the basic instruction: mix skin thoroughly. Instead she was like a yogurt with the jam on top that had been only partially stirred.

Her three sisters and brother did not share the affliction. They had skins of varying shades of beige, buff, what would be construed as normal for the offspring of a white mother and black father.  But she had large uneven brown patches all over her white body. Splotches of dark color in a white sea. Blotches that wouldn’t go away. Splotches that would brand her for the rest of her existence. She looked up. It would soon be time for her to leave the house, to suffer the stares of the strangers as she walked down the sidewalk.

She had seen women on the high street covered from head to toe in a forgiving black garment. But strangely none of her kind wore it. If anything, it would make her more obvious. And she just wanted to be not seen at all.

As she had grown up, she noticed that she seemed to feel the world through the dark patches. Just like a child looking through a keyhole. They were excessively sensitive to touching of any kind, ridiculously ticklish, as if they were the very essence of her being.

To her being. To her being different. If only she had been born with green blood, or a forked tongue, something that could be hidden safely away.

It was time. She left the house and walked with her family silently down the street. She tried to hide, to blend in with her brothers and sisters. Her owner looked down at her family of dogs. She could never for the life of her understand how Dotty, the only mottled dog of the litter, and by far the most beautiful of the lot, was so very shy.