Cherry Heartwood

a horror short

This is the first draft version of this story, so it might change a bit once it’s published! Enjoy! It’s about 7k words, so it’s a good chunk.

He had the strangest scar I’d ever seen. More like a tattoo than a scar. A tiny, detailed piece of art that had been painstakingly carved into his skin.

It was so small, at first. No longer than the bed of one of my fingernails. An unmistakable silhouette of a sakura blossom etched into the flesh of his muscular calf. It had to be an old scar, since the skin was shiny, smooth, and white. If the light hadn’t hit it just right, I never would have noticed it.

I did my best not to ogle men at the gym anyway, so I was sure that distracting myself with another activity would move my brain beyond it. I’d been so busy staring at the scar that I hadn’t bothered to look at his face, or the rest of him.

Embarrassing, honestly. Dehumanizing and unlike me.

And later that evening, I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. I wasn’t sure if it was the symmetry of the cherry blossom, or the scar itself that had me in a chokehold. There was something about it that I just couldn’t shake.

If it had been a tattoo, I wouldn’t have spared the flower more than a passing glance. So many people are running around with their entire bodies acting as a living canvas, it takes something truly extraordinary to grab me like that. But something about that shiny, fresh skin so stark in relief against the deeply tanned flesh surrounding it captivated me.

The only way to satisfy my curiosity would be to ask the man with the scar for its story. And maybe his, too.

The next day, I spent extra time walking around the gym, slyly stealing glances at any exposed male calves. Lots of pretty muscles, but no luck. He’d either opted to wear pants that day, or he wasn’t at the gym. I mentally kicked myself for not getting a good look at anything other than the delicate floral wound that was lovingly etched into his leg.

Que sera. Tomorrow was another opportunity.

…until it wasn’t. Neither was the next day. Or the next. Or even the day after that.

Three weeks passed before I came across the Scarred Man, again. At least, I thought it was him. But now, the number of scars had multiplied. If they weren’t exact replicas of the single one I’d seen before, I would have doubted it was the same man.

Before, there had been only one small flower. It was hard to be sure of the current count, since I watched him doing squats via his reflection, courtesy of the mirror in front of me. It looked closer to ten blossoms now, maybe more. They were all joined together, except for one, by a carving of a branch that marred his skin with scars that looked a bit more purple. The wounds were clearly fresher. The lone flower drifted away from the cluster on the branch in a steady descent towards an unseen ground somewhere below.

The steady, calculated flow of the lines had clearly been etched by the same hand. The level of detail in every aspect of the design was consistent, stunningly realistic. Transfixed by the artistry, it was a genuine struggle to force my gaze to move upward. I needed to get a better view of the rest of the Scarred Man, because I had to see him. It was no longer just a want. It was a visceral need to gaze upon the rest of him. Otherwise, I could drift away to the place where those blossoms filled the air with their delicate aroma and innumerable petals.

A fiery yearning to see the whole picture scorched through my veins. I wanted to know him. To touch those scars and ask their story. His story.

My eyes travelled north, skimming past formidable glutes and thighs that clearly never skipped leg day. A narrow waist was topped by broad, toned, sun-kissed shoulders that didn’t struggle with the weight of the barbell and plates that rested on them.

My heart stopped and my mouth ran dry. I nearly dropped the dumbbells I was using, fumbling and feeling a twinge in my wrist that warned me I should have just let it fall. If only my gaze had followed that advice.

His dark hair was tossed over one shoulder in a thick braid, but the bare skin of his neck and shoulders shot fear into my heart with the precision of a cherub’s arrow.

Sakura blossoms, linked with detailed branches that arched down towards what had to be a central trunk. Their petals all carved in patterns that flowed down his arms and beneath the plain black tank top he wore. I knew that any of his concealed flesh was littered with the beautiful flowers as surely as I knew the sun would rise tomorrow.

I’d been curious and intrigued before, but all I felt now was a fear and wariness that sank into my bones. I’ve always trusted my gut, and every instinct in my body was screaming that I needed to run. To get away from this man with his weird scars. A man who’d never done anything to me. Not spoken a word, and I’d never even seen his face.

Maybe that was what I truly needed to avoid. Making eye contact. The voices in my head reached a fever pitch, a frenzied froth of panic that had me hurrying to set my weights back on the rack. I watched him setting his own weights back into their places, and time slowed as my pulse quickened. Now was the time to scurry off, but my body felt sluggish, like any movement commands sent from my brain to muscles had a time delay.

I struggled, fought the immobility, screamed internally with frustration. I watched his reflection lean side to side, stretching his arms over his head. The light caught and bounced off those shimmering sakura blossoms, and my hands trembled. I ached to touch them, to see if they were as silken as the petals they were modeled after.

No! I had to resist it. I forced my gaze to the floor, off to the side from my own feet, and I could suddenly breathe again. I could move. I just had to keep my eyes down and not make the mistake of staring at him again. I hurried away and jogged into the locker room, doing my damnedest to look casual about it.

I had headphones in my ears, so it was fine. I normally showered at the gym, but I had no desire to do anything other than leave the building as soon as possible. It wasn’t just a want. It was crucial to my existence. I could feel it.

Even though he hadn’t been following me, I paused to look around the empty locker room. I pulled one of the earbuds free, suddenly feeling more nervous without the ability to hear what was happening around me. Obnoxious music played from the overhead speakers at low volume, but it was otherwise silent.

I prowled through the locker room, only satisfied after I even inspected the showers and bathroom stalls. He wasn’t hiding out in there anywhere. And neither was anyone else. Exhaling heavily, I retrieved my bag and keys from the locker. “Get your shit together…” I murmured to myself under my breath, embarrassed that I was so twisted over something so ridiculous.

When it turned out to be nothing, I told myself I could laugh it off. Maybe it was some sort of tribal scarification, and I was just a culturally insensitive idiot. Whatever meaning or reasoning was behind the wounds that the Scarred Man made no effort to hide… I told myself that curiosity was going to skin the cat if I didn’t just drop it and remove it from my mind.

Getting him off my conscious mind was a reasonable task. With a concerted effort, I finally rose to the occasion and distracted myself from thoughts of how much texture those scars would have as my fingertips skated across his skin. My subconscious, sleeping mind however… There was no escaping the Scarred Man in my dreams.

I was trapped in a hall of mirrors, growing more and more panicked as the moments went on. I tried to keep calm, to be logical, to follow along a row of glass until it led me from the room or bumped into another solid wall of glass and I had to backtrack. But I finally saw a space between the rows of reflections and made a break for it.

My shaky breathing was loud in my ears, and I could hear footsteps that weren’t my own. Heavier. Slower. Growing closer. I’d left the initial room of mirrors, but the walkways between them grew narrower as I continued forward. Before I knew it, I had to turn sideways to keep moving, my speed slowed almost to a crawl.

I paid no mind to the sweat and tears that stained my skin, focused only on getting away. From the mirrors, from whoever was behind me. And just like that, it was over. I was stuck. In a space just wide enough that I wasn’t physically unable to move, I’d come to the end of the path. A solid wall of glass blocked any further forward movement.

I don’t know what words fell from my lips, but an incoherent panicked babble bubbled forth. I started to slide back towards where the path was wider, but at the footsteps suddenly so near to me… I froze and fixed my gaze on the ground.

“Hey,” a soft, gravelly voice sank into my ears. “Why are you running? You shouldn’t even be here."