The Harmless Detail

Wisdom is in the little details.

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It started with a small rose-like patch on his skin. Reddish-brown, almost like a little tattoo that had etched itself on Barry Leong's right wrist. He glanced at it, barely, then paid it no mind. It itched, very slightly. Nothing worth discussing at the dinner table. Too unnoticeable to interrupt the day. 

Barry decided that it could wait - he was simply too busy for rose tattoo patches. Putting food on his hungry family's table was far more sensible - his wife had just received the dreaded "R" letter in the mail. He was now the sole tender of the family's financial garden.

Life couldn't come to a standstill. Barry's rose tattoo took up more space on his shoulder, very quietly. Just heat-induced expansion.  Enlargement too small for his already overwrought mind.

Barry passed. The rose tattoo patch hadn't overgrown on his skin; in fact, it had shrunk to almost oblivion. But the thorns from the roses had pricked.

Subtly.

Yet cruelly. 

Mentally.

In ways Barry had not realized himself. The danger hadn't been where anyone looked.

The patch had begun small enough to overlook.

To prick and bleed.

To erase. 

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Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

For Mikeydred's February Challenge