Tet Fe Mal
By Zin E. Rocklyn, first published in FIYAH
When a mysterious bruise appears on the back of her head, a woman struggles to figure out why—and stumbles upon her past.
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Plot Summary
The woman tears off a scab on the back of her head, causing her to bleed. She bandages it and then looks at her face in the bathroom mirror. She downs two headache pills. At work, her coworker asks her what happened to her head. The woman says she’s fine, that she’ll finish up their current case. The coworker leaves, saying there’s a meeting soon. Later, the woman goes to a market, grabs groceries, and has a chill evening. The next morning, she awakes to blood on her pillow, her bandage loose. She sees, in the bathroom, that the tender area around her cut has grown thricefold. She bandages it again and goes to work. She thinks about how the cut had come from her barber shop, where a young man, in lieu of her usual barber, accidentally cut the back of her head. As the barber shop’s owner apologizes to her, she sees the young man smiling at her. Now, at work, her coworker tells her to get it checked out. She says she only has a headache. The coworker then points out that blood is flowing down her back and tells her to go home, as she already did lots of work on their current case. Before she knows it, pain fills her body, she screams, and she passes out.
As a kid, the woman is never really social in high school. She gets kicked out of newspaper and cheerleading for various incidents. She leaves town, gets her degree in five years, and starts a new life alone in a big city.
Now, the medical assistant asks if anyone can drive her home. She hesitantly accepts a company car, and the medical assistant urges her to go to a hospital to get stitches, as well as get it generally checked out, as there was something weird in her cut. The woman says she’ll rest for today and come in tomorrow. The next day, however, on the platform, she has a headache. She considers going home, but she gets onto the packed train where pain fills her head and destabilizes her again.
Back then, at the age of fifteen, the woman loses her virginity to her English teacher. In college, she has no-strings-attached sex, learning what it is that she likes and doesn’t like. One man tried to love her wholeheartedly, though she didn’t know what to do in return. He leaves, thinking of her cold.
In the hospital room, the woman comes to. She asks where she’s at, and a nurse tells her that she’s been in the emergency room for three hours and that they’re running tests. The woman lies about how she got her cut, and they continue to run diagnostics on her. The doctor comes in and tells her that her scans came out fine and that she just needs stitches and bandages. Hours later, she leaves. However, in the taxi, she is overwhelmed with heat. At home, she strips naked and puts herself under her ceiling fan. She pleasures herself. When she comes, she knows what she must do.
The woman goes to a club. She accepts a drink from a man who bought it for her. She asks the bartender for something better, and she obliges her. The bartender asks if it’s been a while since she came to the club. They flirt back and forth until the bartender takes her home. In the taxi, they make out, but soon enough, the woman sees the young man from the barber shop. She gets out, and the bartender follows her, to the young man’s apartment. There, the bartender gives the woman her phone number and lets her go in alone. The woman heads inside, where the young man tells her to sit. Angrily, she asks him who he is. He asks her to follow him, and she does. In his apartment, she hears a thud and asks if someone is okay. However, she then feels a sharp pain, but then realizes that she’s face to face with someone she used to know fifteen years ago. They kiss.
The woman wakes up. She sees the bartender between her legs. Quickly, the woman says she must go. She thinks of what she saw, the young man, and falls dizzily outside as she tries to find her way. A taxi offers to take her to a hospital, but she asks him to take her to her place instead. There, she goes to her bathroom. She looks in the mirror. She puts her fingers into her cut and pulls, until all of her flesh is gone, naked.
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