Infection

by Jane Thomas

Red delicately pulled a filmy white tee over her head, gently working it down her body. This was a satisfying sort of pain: the swelling flesh red around a brightly colored design. She loved a new tattoo, and her body, like a great chapel, would never be finished. Next came the cotton full-bottomed panties. This pain had no redeeming qualities: a surge in flora that was normally kept in balance, an itchiness that could not be scratched, and the strong suspicion that her beau was not hers alone. She was just now realizing in the heat of infection that she was wrong - she mistook his awkwardness as endearing, his nervous laugh for sincere inexperience, and his professions of love as truth.

6S

Jane Thomas has been writing since the second grade. Now a grown-up, she is a perpetual student and lover of life.