The Bruise: A Pizza Company Literary Short

The following is a short story written by Jason:

The Bruise

“Sometimes bruises carry the oddest stories” he thought as he looked at the sad face with a false smirk in the mirror. The shiner just under the face’s eye is massive and beyond conspicuous. He figured it best to let the others make their own stories and explanations. Swashbuckling adventures, drunken meanderings, and lackadaisical accidents all sound much more interesting than the truth. They are also much less embarrassing to him. Well in a more metaphorical sense the theme of the drunken meandering is not too far from the truth. Alcohol was certainly involved, or at least reeking in her system. The bruise looks quite nasty and savage, as if he were some kind of victim the night before. Even though there was pain in its inception, there was too much pleasure in it for him to really consider it an attack. He certainly did not consider himself any kind of victim, although maybe he really was. That voice of dissent was quickly and efficiently silenced, imprisoned in the deepest darkest dungeons in the back of his mind.
The strongest muscle in the body is in the jaw. This is especially true in women. The average woman can produce 200 pounds of force; some can produce up to a grand. This muscle, when in unison with the lips can create an airtight seal and produce the force known as suction. People have come up with very strange ways of expressing their passion and affections for one another. So many of these expressions are orally fixated, maybe because of the sensitivity of lips, maybe because of operant conditioning from infancy, or maybe just due to random chance in our cerebral hard wiring. Whatever the reason, the mouth is where its at, and we humans have gotten very creative with it. This becomes even more extreme when alcohol is involved and passions flow beyond our normal methods of expressing them.
She was like an animal possessed, kissing, sucking, licking, feeling the entire experience with every nerve ending possible, especially those sensitive oral ones. As she overflowed with an inebriated lustful passion, the lips locked onto his skin airtight. The powerful female jaw began to move, increasing the pressure differential between outside and in. Capillaries burst left and right, spreading from the central pressure point. The nerves on his face lit up sending a message that the brain could not decide on how to interpret. Where they signals of pleasure, pain, both, or maybe something new altogether?
She was moving, riving, sweating, breathing, and marking her territory. The power in her jaw alone insured a mark would be left; a primal part of her central brain was appeased. It also didn’t help that he bruised easily. A mark, one hell of a mark, a mark to end all marks, sat there and throbbed in the lamplight. Some people call it a badge of honor, others a sign of love. To others it is a mark of Cain, a point of shame. Some wear them on their collars; others hide them behind those collars. He did not have this luxury. This was no small blueish, reddish, purple oval on the neck. A large, sprawling black and blue amorphous blob originates below the eye socket and covers most of his left cheek. Nobody could hide this and nobody could see it in any light of honor or accomplishment. It was just there, for the world to see. Its message ambiguous and originating from a place before our human social constructs. He will not be a pariah, but he will be just one more footprint out of step.
He turns from the mirror, puts on his thick leather coat, and opens the door. Let them suppose, let them interpret, let them give their meaning. He does not care. Life is too short to stop for such things. Skin is though, bruises heal, and anecdotes come at the price of this kind of pain. The time for rumination will be later, for now it is time for class.