Inktober day 8’s prompt is “frail”. Frail was a challenging prompt to think about because I (like many of us I’m sure) want to think of characters and creations as being strong and powerful and impactful, and frail tends to go against those feelings. When trying to think of something that encapsulated “frail” to me, I jumped around a lot between different types of broken or fragile objects, frail people, and even more obscure concepts like mental health, imaginations, and intangible ideas.
She had not eaten for days - that much was evident. Her skin was like grey tissue stretched across the white and pink muscle of her torso. She wasn’t sure how long she had been in the room - her only way of tracking the time was counting her bones. Meals came and went, she couldn’t keep track of those, and who knew how many she missed as she drifted in and out of consciousness, her dreams seamlessly blending with her reality more often than not. Her bowel movements were even more infrequent, leaving her unable to estimate days passing based on bodily functions.
Today she could clearly count six ribs - three on each side. She wasn’t sure how long it took for a body to go from flesh to bone, but mentally recording the changes in her own physique was the only semblance she had of knowing her body was real, and that time was passing.
She wasn’t sure exactly how many ribs a human body had, she couldn’t recall ever learning that information. She knew she most likely wouldn’t live to count them all, would never get her answer. Although the bones in the tops of her feet and hands were clearly visible, hard ridges pressing through her greying skin, it wasn’t fun to count those - she’d always known those were there, always been able to feel them, move them.
She knew her spine was probably countable by now. She could practically feel her individual vertebrae pressing against her skin as she curled in on herself, her arms wrapping around her in an attempt to feel them, her fingertips coming just short of comfortably being able to examine each bone.
Her ribs were what interested her most, the biological cage more comforting than the concrete one. Whether she curled up or stretched out, her fingertips were always able to find each curved bone, tapping on them gently like her own personal xylophone, sounds drifting in and out of her head in silent music. And now she had six to play, six new melodies to create, six new ideas in her head to replace the old ones, at least for a little while.
Six ribs’ worth of time had passed. Her ashy fingertips gently ghosted over each rib, finding the middle one on her left side. It felt the thickest, and when her fingertips tapped it made the loudest sound, low and hollow. When she pressed it felt hardest, sturdy almost.
Claw-like nails, jagged from six rib’s worth of time of chewing, scratching, scraping. Her skin was thin, thinner than she had expected, her fingertips finding the hard bone almost instantly. It was smooth, wet, thin. It took two hands to pull it free, her voice making the melody she had practiced on her xylophone.
It was pink and white in her hands, curved with a faint point to the end. Blood covered her hands, covered her bones, her body inside and out. She knew it was dripping from her now, a tap she couldn’t turn off, tempting her with a liquid she couldn’t drink.
She pressed the tip to the concrete wall of her cage, beginning to scratch slowly, carefully. A point becoming a spike.
She hoped the door opened again before the tap ran dry.