Instalment One Hundred and Fifty Two

A pain scale. It seemed such a stupid thought. I laughed it off through gritted teeth when I first heard of such a thing. 

Until I developed one of my own.

Of course it grew out my own suffering, a suffering no one understood. Agony really. I was never one for yelling and screaming. A cold fish some people called me. I stayed silent and internalised it, swallowing it down until I was bursting. 

Full to my gills with pain.

And that’s when I developed my pain scale.

It came to me in a shiny blue flash, a quicksilver fleck of armour that would protect me from the world.

My pain increased so much that one scale no longer contained my suffering; I floundered around like a guppy on a dock gasping for air. That is when I developed another scale. 

A second scale that worked in tandem, overlapping and fortifying the first. But I needed more, to deflect my agony. Until I was consumed, in my pain scales.

Freak, people yelled at my pain incrusted form.

I was not saddened. I was not thin skinned.  I was numb to such sensitivities, I had developed an emotional callus years before.