This is the third story in this summer’s online Flash Fiction series. You can read the entire series, and our Flash Fiction stories from previous years, here.
“The Community Safety Division of the Metropolitan Police arrested _______ (male, 38 yrs) on suspicion of practicing medicine without a license, in violation of the Medical Practitioners Statute. He is accused of having performed numerous unauthorized medical procedures over a period of three and a half years, while working as a part-time physician at three separate clinics. His duties included conducting intake interviews, prescribing medications, and suturing. His patients expressed surprise and concern when informed that he was unlicensed. ‘But he was so kind and willing to listen,’ commented one.”
When my brother came across an article like this, he would carefully cut it out of the newspaper, fold it neatly, and tuck it in the breast pocket of his jacket. Later, he would take it out and reread it, sighing as though it upset or even frightened him. “I know just how he must have felt,” he’d say. “He’d have tried to stay calm, but he must have been constantly worried that he’d be found out. He must have been a bundle of nerves.”
My brother’s preoccupation was not limited to fake doctors. He also cut out articles about unlicensed teachers and pilots, lawyers who had never passed the bar, hairdressers with no diploma. Before he knew it, his pocket was bulging with clippings.
Perhaps he felt that he, too, was an impostor, that everyone else had been given the proper documentation or an official badge, and he alone had no credentials. Perhaps he was convinced that the moment would come when his unlicensed status would come to light. And what would he do then?
But the truth was that he didn’t work in a profession that required a license; nor had he ever pursued one that did. Still, his anxiety only grew deeper. This impostor syndrome shaped his personality, and it’s probably fair to say that it dictated the course of his life, though it never seemed to consume his soul. If anything, he was purified by it.
As you know, my brother and I were twins. At birth, his weight was barely a third of mine. His lungs were underdeveloped, and his fingers were as thin as strands of spaghetti. Our parents’ friends who heard the news of our birth and came to congratulate them were puzzled by the imbalance between the two babies. It was as though I had robbed my brother of the nutrition he’d needed, and he’d ended up as an afterthought—a by-product of my birth, a mistake.
Still, having survived the crisis of his birth, my brother grew and developed, and, by the time he reached puberty, he was enormous, weighing three times what I did. So, in terms of outward appearance, we never did look like twins, but, in our hearts, we were always very close. Our parents died young—some might say out of worry for my brother—but I stuck with him, doing what I could to take their place.
From the time he was a child, my brother’s greatest talent was for picking off scabs. He preferred to play indoors, and, given his cautious nature, he almost never injured himself, so it was left to me, tomboy that I was, to supply him with the material that he needed to develop his skill.
“I think this one’s almost ready,” he would say, pointing discreetly at my knee.
“Yes, by all means,” I would answer. Then I’d stretch out my leg, and he would choose the right spot and angle from which to approach the task.
My brother’s judgment when it came to removing scabs was always impeccable, and he never once caused me pain in the process. He would insert the nail of his little finger into the gap between my skin and the scab, and then, with just the slightest pressure, lift it off. The scab would fall away, as if relieved to be set free, and the tender pink skin beneath it would be revealed, so fragile that it might split at the gentlest touch. I was always astonished to see my brother’s plump finger perform such a delicate operation, and then, as I studied the newly visible pink skin, I felt that it was somehow a membrane that encased my brother’s heart.
After the age when I often skinned my knees had passed, he hit upon the idea of injuring himself so as to have scabs to pick off. I pleaded with him to stop, but he refused to listen. To be honest, my brother had a rare gift not only for removing scabs but for creating them. He’d use sandpaper, box cutters, shards of glass, gravel, and the like, to create scabs of varying shapes and styles. His jellylike body seemed to be suited to producing scabs of all kinds—thick, swollen scabs; scabs as thin as a sheet of mica; heart-shaped scabs; velvety-smooth ones. . . . Each was extraordinary. He developed shapes that no sculptor or engraver could have matched, scabs so amazing that you wanted to hold them and gaze at them forever.
My brother stored these scabs in a box that had once held chocolates. Impostor newspaper clippings in his breast pocket, scabs in the chocolate box.
Eventually, he embarked on the project of painting self-portraits using these scabs. Though “painting” is not quite the right way to put it. Perhaps the best way to describe his process is to say that, by gluing scabs to tiny squares of cardboard, he would allow an image of his own face to rise to the surface. He never once added artificial colors to the scabs or cut them into different shapes. He used them just as they were, as they came away from the original wound. The scabs varied widely in shape, but also in coloring and texture. So the self-portraits he made with them were richly varied as well—so much so that you could almost forget that they were devised from clots of blood. They were subtly shaded, with depth and even a certain warmth.
I can still picture him in the evening at the dining-room table, applying glue to the scabs with his fingertip and working intently on his creations: back hunched, enormous belly and legs squeezed under the table, his fingers pinching the scabs ever so delicately, his eyes narrowed as he held them up to the light or turned them over, searching for just the right position for them in the portrait. And, all the while, a new scab would be forming on his knee.
“Time for dinner,” I’d tell him, but the words never seemed to reach his ears. Instead, I would find myself turning off the stove, putting his plate in the refrigerator, and waiting patiently until the scab painting was finished, my eyes fixed on his back.
I think it’s possible that the scab paintings were my brother’s equivalent of a license, a badge meant to prove that his existence was not a mistake, that he had as much right as anyone else to be here. A badge he made by whittling away at his own body.
“Scab Painting,” by Yoko Ogawa
Source: News Flash Trending
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