Six Ragged Lines

[rinue]

Six ragged lines of pink scar tissue, as if some great cat had grabbed by the hips and *pulled*, leaving the permanent outline of his claws. Easily hidden by t-shirts and drawstring slacks, but sometimes the shirts rode up and people stared. "Just stretch marks," she called them, but unlike any stretch marks he'd ever seen. As different from those innocuous tracks as a Manchurian dock worker from Genghis Khan.