Today, when I was walking around the apartment shirtless, my scarred torso caught Jean-Paul’s eye. “Where did you get that?” he asked, pointing to my belly where a bullet had to be cut out. “And that?” Another bullet from the same day, near my shoulder. “What about THAT?" Jean-Paul saved the best for last: a long, horizontal scar across my neck. I was wondering when he'd get around to asking about it. “Oh, that,” I said as casually as I could. “I just sort of ran into something.” I ran into something, alright. A wire—strung between the hands of an assassin. That was back when I was in vice. Pas grave. No big deal. I survived. Now I have a permanent reminder to watch my back.
There are other scars, too. Like the one between my shoulder blades, long since tattooed over. Three letters: B-R-I, the initials of a special unit I was once in, carved into my skin by my fellow officers. They held me down and did it to me. I thought it was some kind of sick hazing until they each showed me theirs—one guy had it on his chest, another on his arm, and so on. That’s when I knew I was in, I was accepted. Funny how they put mine where I could never see it, could even forget about it. But some scars you never forget, especially the ones you can’t see.
Like the ones carved into JP's screwed up little mind. I have those, too. We’re screwed up together. I guess that’s why we found each other, why we stick together. You might think the street did that to us, but the truth is, we were scarred long before we ran away to the streets, at least on the inside. The physical scars come later when you try to avenge the mental ones.
