Flash lit: Battle Scars
His skin was covered in old scars and bright tattoos, and he reclined languidly on the cushions as I cleaned him up. The history of his skin made no sense: The colors and lines of the tattoos were vivid and sharp, like they'd been done last week. But the scars that defaced them looked decades old: cruel and terrible, but faded with time. I couldn't figure out how and old scar could deface a new tattoo. In the warm lamplight, he looked like the vandalized portrait a saint. Vandalized first by a brilliant graffiti artist who liked trolls and turtles and runes and fire. And then again by some sick flayer with the dark art of hurtling wounds deep into your past. If the scars still pained him, he showed no sign of it. Spent and drained, he looked beautiful through my bloodcrush eyes. No doubt when his blood wore off he'd be all dopey grins and stooped posture and middle age again. No doubt he still was all that; I just didn't have to notice it for a while, not with ...