‘Cicatrix’ by Elizabeth O’Neill

Where the shark had attacked was like parchment, peaks and valleys embroidered where old skin fused with new. She was the only one who had dared touch it.

Alone with him, hidden among upturned boats on the shore emptied of tourists, she’d risked her curfew. She’d waited all summer. Waited for him to look, to talk. She’d wanted to trace that scar twisting around his dark shoulder, gilded now in moonlight.

She thought it was beautiful, like pencil marks underneath a painting. She thought this was love and she could die here.

He’d already been dead. Three minutes, he was told. The scar, a mark of ownership given by the shark who had not won the fight.

When she suddenly kissed it, he flinched.

You went under boi, you was gone.

Her hair brushed against his skin.

You were out cold, boi.

Lost half yer blood, boi.

All he remembered was the sound. The ripping. Some said he left the hospital too soon. Went back to the boats too soon.

You called out for yer mama, boi.

You were split right to yer skinny white bones, boi.

When she kissed him it drew out the ghost of the attack. It was there underneath the surface. Those teeth hidden in a landscape carved by scar tissue. So that when she kissed him, he heard it and gasped.

What was lost? Who knew? If you nearly died once it was unlucky, but if you nearly died twice, that was careless. And what was lost? With cracked flesh and bone, was the soul atomised? Did it depart, even a little?

What was lost? What could be regained?

When she kissed him and he gasped, he took her face in his hands, and held it there. A pause. Before falling inwards.

Now he kissed her, not sweet but desperate. With their shared breath, it was magnetising, drawing the ghost out and obliterating the last of him. She pushed her palms against his shoulders. Her breath, he swallowed, as if it was her soul that might resuscitate his own muted shape. Fill out the emptiness. She clawed into his flesh. He pinned her down. She bit hard on his lip.

But he was gone. He was gone. There was only the shark.

From issue #5: autumn/winter 2017

About the Author
Elizabeth O’Neill lives in Dublin and works in radio production and as a freelance features writer. She has had two radio plays produced by RTE Radio One. The radio play Ghostbike was shortlisted for a 2016 ZeBBie award.