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Life’s all right in devil town.
Touch is something new to her. The way it burns her skin and sets her nerves alight.
That isn’t what she’s concerned about.
It’s not the loss of the pleasant warmth of the sun. It's not the unexplainable desire to have that hand brush against her palm one more time. They aren't what makes Izzy’s head spin round and round. (It is, but it isn’t the main reason)
It’s the magenta dye at the edge of her fingertips.
She knows what it means. You’d be an idiot if you were blind to the world of colour all around you. Everyone in school was painted in colour. Reds and whites, blues or greens. It’s rarer for Izzy spot a patch of clear skin than someone who looks like an alien.
Unless she looks at herself of course.
Izzy is a blank canvas in a world of paints and curious children.
All the people around her, some of whom have been sprouting marks since the second of their birth. She’s at the age it’s more than friends making their mark on each other. They’ll get removed eventually , wiped off by someone else.
There’s only rumours and web pages to tell her about the art. The stickiness that seemed to coat your heart. The articles say living without it is like being unprotected and deathly ill. They say it’s like dunking yourself into a bucket of paint. It feels weird at first, but soon you get use too the colours.
It doesn’t work like that. She felt the same way when she waded in a bath of yellow ink to try and feign her parents signature.
Yeah, right, no one's gonna catch us now
But now there is magenta dye, on her fingertips.
Izzy still feels empty. She feels emptier, as if the content of her entire being had been poured out onto the ground. They've been left to evaporate in the sun.
The hallway is full with bustling people. Everyone is pushing into her shoulder. It doesn’t give the same warmth. The type that can only be gotten from lying in the sun as you burn. It doesn’t turn her shoulders blue.
There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s been like that for years.
It’s going to continue to be like that.
Yeah.
Izzy is safer, better as a blank canvas.
There’s no one to be used against her.
She is safe. Safer this way.
The girl, she won’t know who she is. She won’t go looking for her.
(That’s a lie. She wants Izzy as much as Izzy wants her.)
The simplest thing to do is keep her hand in her pocket and continue on like normal. No one will call her out on it. The person was a stranger. She’s safe, as safe as she can get until she gets home and grabs the concealer.
Maybe then she can go back to believing it doesn’t exist herself.
Dad has bought a new car now
It hurts in a new way that her dad leaves her skin blank. It’s like snow. It hurts at first, then it goes numb before you go back to the safety of the warmth. It’s a vicious cycle from there.
A perk of being a wallflower. She doesn’t freeze every time she walks through the door.
If her house is constantly snowing, her dad might also be a lake. He’s meant to wash her pain away but it’s frozen. Not even the waves can break off from the part of him that does not care. He’s just carrying the bedload.
Izzy is lucky to be the mess at the bottom of the river, even if it means walking on the ice. It could be thick or it could be thin enough for her to crack through.
When she was younger, she would fall in the ice more often. Izzy hadn’t known how to tell it apart. Those days she used to be able to delude herself. The reason her marks didn’t show up on her dad was because he was already so bright.
That was a lie of course. Colours painted over each other. Every time she walked through the door he was a new puzzle.
The question stopped being ‘can I just not see my own mark against his mural’ years ago. It became ‘Does he not want me? Do I not want him? Or is this feeling mutual?’
We're fine, no one's gonna catch us now
No one notices.
Of course no one notices. Why does Izzy expect them to notice. They aren’t obligated to notice her being a bit closer to each other. Or the way she stares at every single person’s hand in hopes that they have a new mark there.
She doesn’t know what her colour is.
That makes it harder.
Why is her first concern what colour her only soulmate has of her.
When had they become her soulmate?
Izzy shook her head frantically .
She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t she doesn’t she doesn’t.
Izzy is curious as too what colour she is.
Yeah, that’s why she looks over to see Nala’s hands. She was the person who Izzy came into contact with the day before. Nala notices her not so subtle attempt to see whether she has a mark. The girl shows her right hand willingly . As if it isn’t shameful at all that one of her soul mates are a frozen canvas that can’t be painted on.
Izzy is red . A dark red, that seems to rival that of blood.
No one else sees it. No one else knows what colour she leaves on the skin other than Nala and her. It seems like something she’s meant to keep a secret even if it’s nearly public information.
They don’t share any words but they don’t need too.
The world moves on around them.
You said something dumb again
Nala knew who Izzy was long before she left her mark on the girl. It was the girls like her who made her pursue the science behind the marks on her skin. The gentle touches and warm hugs of her sister. The slap to her head when she swore like a sailor at the dinner table. Each colour came with a memory of giggles and grins.
That’s why when she saw Izzy, she didn’t really understand. Nala knew how soul marks worked . She knew her family were important so they imprinted on her. The chemistry and biology behind it was lost on her. That didn’t mean the topic was unknown to her.
She asked her parents first.
They tried to talk down to Nala.
She was old enough to understand.
They disagreed.
That was okay.
Nala thinks she’d rather not know. It isn’t something to hear from them.
At twelve, she threw herself into the world of marking. The chemicals that send the warmth and how they react to create the splodges of colour.
With each search, it seems like she opens a new can of worms.
There’s more questions than answers.
She’s down, down down deep the rabbit hole.
So when Izzy glances at the red fingertips, Nala shows them.
The words leave her mouth because it was supposed to be imprinting, your first mark. Izzy’s was nothing like that. So all that work was kind of stupid in that retrospect.
At least it will get into a university.
She's mad, at least that's what they say
Izzy, it turns out, is very amusing. Despite the cold exterior, that’s freezing to touch, she melts at Nala’s warmth. She isn’t being completely melted. Just thawed and chipped away to leave something more than ice.
In some ways, it make the girl a pest.
She arrives late to their study sessions with her phone on a measly ten percent. Izzy quite frankly , could not give a thought over their exams.
Most days, they sit in the library. Nala studies, Izzy reads a fantasy book before complaining she hasn’t got any work done. Nala rolls her eyes and puts the fantasy book away. She promises they’ll do the digestion system revision next week. Izzy complains that life does not need exams.
They go their separate ways.
Izzy doesn’t message her.
She’s left on read.
She confirms it one day in Maths. She can’t be bothered .
Nala can’t bring herself to care. Not when Izzy jumps in puddles when Nala forgot her coat this one time because it’d be funny.
Or when she looks her dead in the eyes one day and declares she does not care about Nala. The paint drips off of her. For the first time since she was born, Nala feels empty. She knows that Izzy’s cells are pushing her away because they have changed their mind. That they just died, there and then.
No one talks to Izzy sometime after that.
After all, who rejects the only soul mark they have?
Mum and daddy aren't in love
Nala sat on a bathroom stall tracing where her skin had been red . The water splashed on her face proved fruitless as tears continued down her cheeks.
Her phones on speaker. Her dad mumbles reassurances down the line. Maybe Izzy needs some space and then the marks will come get. It comes from a good heart. It’s kind intentions but it still makes Nala choke on her own breaths.
It’s like she’s starving. She’s been on a boat, that’s rocking and rocking and rocking with every action she takes. There used to be food but now she’s ran out. Her bodies eating itself from the inside out. Instead of reducing her muscles to ashes, it’s her brain and mind.
Everything is static. It’s buzzing.
The loss of a soul mark is like a part of your soul being ripped out doesn’t pass it. Who decided that was the only way to describe it. Had they lost someone too? Who had been there Izzy.
Nala knows she shouldn’t pass out on the bathroom floor. It’s dirty from the amount of physical education students who came there. It made her nose scrunch up.
Nala also didn’t want to feel the pain anymore.
In the end one choice won out.
If she didn’t hear the cries of the next person to come in, who would know?
That's fine, I'll settle for two birthdays
Nala wakes up in a bed as if nothing ever happened. Her dad is looking down at her as if it’s a miracle she’s still alive.
The fog had faded.
It seemed as if nothing had ever happened.
She feels warm. The same way Izzy made her feel when she tapped her shoulder. It’s because her dad is clinging to her arm, replacing the now gone red.
Nala knows Izzy isn’t going to be in the hotel room. If the girl even wanted to visit her, she’ll have no proof the two have marked each other recently. (You can’t visit people you harm either. The marks must have been traced to her now.)
She gives her best lopsided grin to her parents. A feeble reassurance that everything’s fine now.
They don’t fall for it.
Instead they wrap her up in their arms. They promise that when the doctor gives them the get go, it’s going to be family movie night.
When the doctors do allow Nala to leave, she looks out from the door.
She isn’t surprised to see Izzy absent. That doesn’t mean she’s not hurt.
Devil town is colder in the summertime