My Skin Was His Cruelest Canvas

I was born a “Butterfly Child.” My skin is as fragile as a monarch’s wing—thin, translucent, and prone to tearing at the slightest touch. When my family’s estate crumbled into bankruptcy, I went to the only person who could save us: my husband, Colin. He was the king of the city’s tech scene, a man who built an empire on cold logic. Instead of a check, Colin took me to a dimly lit, high-end tattoo parlor in the Meatpacking District. He leaned against the leather chair, an arched brow mocking my desperation. “One million for every tattoo,” he said, his voice like silk over gravel. “How much do you need, Maya?” I knew this was his pound of flesh. He was punishing me because I’d dared to touch his precious little plaything, Lexi. I knew my skin couldn’t handle the needle. I knew it would be agony. But I nodded anyway. The first tattoo—a predatory, demonic sigil—was inked into the softest, most private skin of my thigh. I bit my tongue until it bled to keep from screaming. The second, the word “MINE” in jagged script, was carved into the small of my back. The ink mixed with a steady flow of blood that wouldn’t stop. By the time the tenth tattoo was finished, my body was a map of infection and trauma. My consciousness was slipping away into a grey haze. Colin didn’t stay to help me up. He simply tossed a thick stack of bills onto my trembling chest. Ten million Vietnamese Dong. In US dollars, it was barely four hundred bucks. This time, I didn’t scream. I didn’t beg. I gathered the crumpled bills and looked up at him with a ghost of a smile. “Thank you, Colin. This is enough.” Enough to buy my mother a decent urn.

01 As I reached for the last bill, Colin’s polished Oxford boot pinned my hand to the floor. “What did you call me?” He reached down, his fingers catching my chin in a bruising grip. “Usually, you’re so fond of calling me ‘husband.’ Why the change of heart?” The pain from my skin was like a thousand hot needles. I kept my eyes down. For the first time in our marriage, I didn’t look for the man I used to love. “Give me the divorce papers, Colin. I’ll sign them.” There was a time when a single tear from me would have broken him. But Colin’s eyes were cold, devoid of the tenderness that had once defined us. He chuckled, a dry, hollow sound. “Divorce? I spent years nursing you back to health, Maya. I didn’t fix you just to let some other man break you in.” He let go of my face as if he were bored. “From now on, you’re moving into the guest wing. Lexi is moving into the master suite. She’s delicate. She gets cold easily.” I didn’t fight him. I just nodded. I stumbled out of the tattoo shop, my thin coat fluttering in the biting Manhattan wind. I counted the money again. He’d given me an extra hundred. I turned back, intending to return it—I wanted nothing more from him than exactly what I’d ‘earned.’ But through the glass door, I heard the tattoo artist’s excited voice. “Mr. Sharon, the livestream just hit ten million viewers!” The world tilted. The air left my lungs. The shame hit me like a physical blow—the realization that my most private agony had been broadcast to the world. Every word etched into my skin felt a hundred times more painful now. I have Epidermolysis Bullosa. To the world, it’s a medical curiosity. To Colin, it used to be something he guarded with his life. He’d once spent three days in the rain outside a specialist’s office in Switzerland just to get me a consultation. He’d suppressed his own desires for eight years, never touching me for fear of hurting me. It wasn’t until my condition stabilized that we shared our first night together. He had held me like I was made of starlight, whispering, “I will protect you with my life, Maya. Always.” But then he met Lexi, a college athlete. She was vibrant, resilient, and unbreakable. She was everything I wasn’t. In their bed, he told her, “Lexi, I’d give my life for you.” Back in the shop, I heard Colin’s voice again, sharp and calculating. “Did you catch her face?” “No, sir. Per your instructions, we kept the camera below the neck. The ‘anonymous’ tag worked perfectly.” I fumbled with my phone, my fingers slick with blood. I found the link. The words on my body hadn’t been Colin’s choice. They were the results of a live poll. “Property,” “Used,” “Trash”… Filth. I was covered in verbal filth, and the screenshots were already viral. The internet was playing a guessing game: Who is the faceless girl with the butterfly skin? Colin’s shoulders relaxed. “If Maya would just learn to be obedient, I wouldn’t have to go to these lengths,” he said casually. “Lexi will see the screenshots. It’ll show her she’s the only one who matters. Maybe she’ll finally stop being mad at me.” I walked away into the freezing night. My husband knew better than anyone that my skin was at its limit. I could never endure the laser treatments to remove these tattoos. These scars—these insults—were my new permanent skin. I didn’t go back to the penthouse. I hailed a cab and gave the driver an address in a neighborhood Colin wouldn’t recognize. After the bankruptcy, my mother had moved from our estate into a “micro-apartment”—a five-by-five-foot room people in the city called a coffin flat. As the cab pulled up, I saw the flashing lights of an ambulance. Two paramedics were wheeling a gurney out. The figure on it was covered from head to toe in a white sheet. A cold dread settled in my marrow. My hand shook as I dialed my mother’s number. A split second later, the custom ringtone I’d recorded for her began to play from beneath that white sheet. 02 I lunged forward, ignoring the hands trying to hold me back, and yanked the sheet away. My mother’s eyes were wide, fixed in a final, frozen stare of terror. “No… no, she was fine. She was healthy!” I screamed, the sound tearing through the quiet street. The paramedic looked at me with a grimace of pity. “Looks like she swallowed a lethal dose of herbicide. Suicide.” I didn’t believe it. My mother loved me more than life itself. She wouldn’t leave me alone in this world. I found her phone in her coat pocket. There was an open message from an anonymous account. It was a link to a livestream. I collapsed onto the cracked pavement. The pain and the hatred swirled in my chest, choking me. It was me. I was the one who killed her. I found a note in her drafts. Just a few sentences. “Maya, don’t stay with a man who doesn’t love you just for my sake.” “My butterfly girl, leave this city. Find your wings. Find your freedom.” I wailed like a wounded animal over her body. Growing up, my skin was always a mess of blisters and raw patches. Other kids looked at me like I was a monster, something contagious and rotting. Only my mother would hold me, whispering, “You aren’t a monster, Maya. You’re my butterfly. If the world is too harsh for you, we’ll build our own world.” I’d fought so hard to be normal for her. I’d worked so hard to build a life. In middle school, Colin had been the one to fight off the bullies. He’d walked me home every day, even when it was miles out of his way. Back then, he was my light. I thought I’d found the only other person in the world who would protect me. When I graduated, I took the trust fund my mother had saved and invested every cent into Colin’s first startup. I bet everything on him. And I won. Or I thought I did. The day his company went public, Colin handed me the keys to a vintage Rolls Royce. In front of a swarm of reporters, he looked like a god—elegant, powerful, and utterly devoted. “Why such an expensive gift?” a journalist asked. Colin smiled, the cameras flashing in his eyes. “When I was nothing, she sat on the back of my moped and believed in me. I promised her then that one day, she’d only ever sit in the back of a Rolls. It’s time the world starts calling her Mrs. Sharon.” Then he knelt and slipped a diamond onto my finger. It was a fairy tale. The “Gold Standard” of New York romance. I stayed in the morgue all afternoon until the administrator’s voice snapped me back. “Mrs. Sharon, this card was declined too.” It was the last card I had. The man who once bought me mansions had frozen every single account to appease his mistress. I swallowed the bitterness in my throat. I pulled out the crumpled Vietnamese bills, begging the man. “This is all I have. Please, just take care of her. I’ll get the rest, I promise.” The man looked at the colorful bills and scoffed. “This isn’t even enough for a deposit. Look, just call your husband. A man like Colin Sharon won’t even notice this amount.” I closed my eyes and unclasped the gold bangle from my wrist. “This is solid gold. It’s worth at least fifteen thousand. Please.” He took it greedily, testing it with his teeth. His face soured instantly. He slammed it onto the counter. “I called you ‘Mrs. Sharon’ out of respect, but you’ve got some nerve. Don’t come back here with fake gold.” 03 The bracelet Colin had bought me with his very first paycheck was bent out of shape on the counter. My tears fell onto the metal, washing away the tarnish to reveal the cheap iron underneath. A thin plating of gold over a heart of base metal. It was the perfect metaphor for our ten years together. His love had been a lie from the very beginning. I picked up the scrap metal and used my last few dollars to take a cab back to the penthouse. I stood outside the master bedroom. I could hear his voice through the door—lazy, satiated. “I can never really let go with her,” Colin was saying. “If I’m too rough, she bleeds all over the sheets. It ruins the mood.” “I’m much better, aren’t I?” Lexi’s voice was a purr. “You can do whatever you want to me.” I hammered on the door with everything I had left. “Colin! You murderer! You killed my mother!” There was a pause, a ragged breath. “Maya, I’m not bailing out your family’s firm,” Colin shouted back. “Stop using these pathetic lies for attention.” I was sobbing so hard I could barely stand. “I never lied to you! But you… even the gold you gave me was fake! Was anything ever real?” Colin hesitated for a second. “Maya, what the hell are you talking about…” I heard the sound of clothes rustling, but then the sound of a wet, needy kiss. “Colin, stay,” Lexi whispered. “I’m not finished with you yet.” “Fine. Anything you want.” No matter how hard I hit the door, no matter how much I screamed, it didn’t stop them. My agony seemed to be their aphrodisiac. The sounds from the room grew louder, more frantic. I curled into a ball on the cold marble floor, whispering his name like a prayer to a dead god. Colin… give him back. Give me back the boy who loved me. Hours later, the door finally opened. I looked past him into the room. Our wedding portrait hung over the bed. There were two damp handprints on the glass, right over our smiling faces. I knew exactly what they had been doing. Colin looked down at me, and for a fleeting second, something like guilt flickered in his eyes. He reached out as if to help me up. Lexi stepped out behind him and grabbed his hand, sliding it down to her stomach. “Colin, you’re so talented,” she smirked. “I’m only twenty-two. I’ll give you a son in no time. Not like Maya. She’s barely even a woman if she can’t even carry a child.” I stared at her, then at him. “You… you told me you had a vasectomy.” Colin’s gaze turned cold, piercing my heart. “I had it reversed, Maya. I have a legacy now. I need an heir.” The heart he had already broken was shattered into dust. If I hadn’t given him my inheritance, there would be no legacy. We had lost our first baby because my body couldn’t sustain the pregnancy. Colin had knelt in a chapel and sworn he never wanted children if it meant losing me. He’d bought me a St. Christopher charm, promising it would keep me safe forever. 04 I ripped the charm from my neck. The chain tore into my skin, beads of blood blooming instantly. “Take your protection back.” “Maya, I’m not kidding. I was wrong to ever believe your promises.” He didn’t even look at the blood. He gestured to a maid who was holding a tray. “You’re bleeding again. Drink your medicine.” Before I could react, he gave me a cruel, thin smile. “Don’t die in my house, Maya. I’m not letting you turn this place into a crime scene.” I felt a surge of pure, hot rage. I slapped the tray out of his hand. “My mother is dead because you sent her that link! You froze my cards so I couldn’t even afford to bury her!” The slap he gave me in return was deafening. “Maya, stop it! You’d lie about your own mother’s death just for money? How low can you go?” We stood there, staring at each other. The boy with the red eyes who used to cry when I got a paper cut was gone. In his place was a monster with a heart of stone. The silence was broken when a pair of black lace underwear was tossed onto the floor in front of me. They were stained and foul. Lexi leaned against Colin’s arm. “Colin, can Maya wash these for me? I’m so sore, I can barely lift my arms.” When I didn’t move, Colin sighed and rubbed his temples. “Go wash her clothes. Ten thousand dollars for every piece you clean.” “Maya, stop using your mother’s name to con me. If you want money, earn it.” To save my mother from a pauper’s grave, I swallowed my pride. I knelt and picked up the clothes, one by one. When I finished in the laundry room, Lexi was waiting for me in the hallway. “I can give you enough to save your family’s firm from liquidation,” she said, waving a piece of paper. “Just sign the divorce papers.” I stared at the signature at the bottom. “How did you get him to sign this?” Ever since she appeared, I had begged Colin for a divorce, unable to bear the betrayal. He had always refused, preferring to keep me trapped. Lexi shrugged. “I told him I wanted a beach house in the Hamptons. Twenty million dollars. He signed the papers without even looking at the fine print.” Colin wouldn’t give my mother a cent to save her life’s work, but he gave Lexi a twenty-million-dollar vacation home on a whim. I gritted my teeth. “Fine. I’ll sign.” Lexi led me to the garage. “Get in. Let’s go get your money.” But minutes later, I realized we weren’t heading to a bank. We were heading toward the industrial docks. I pounded on the window, screaming for her to stop. A hand came from the back seat, pressing a chemically-soaked rag over my mouth. Everything went black. When I woke up, a sharp pain in my knees forced me to realize I was kneeling on a concrete floor. Lexi used the toe of her designer heel to tilt my chin up. “Maya, do you have any idea how many people are looking for you?” Terror flooded my veins. Lexi turned to the group of men standing in the shadows of the warehouse. “Here she is. The great Colin Sharon’s wife. Well, ex-wife. He signed the papers. She’s nothing now.” She stepped back. “Do whatever you want with her.” The men stepped forward. They were rough, angry. I recognized their uniforms—they were the laborers from my family’s construction sites. I begged them, telling them I was sorry. They spat at me. “Your mother skipped out on two months of wages! We have families to feed!” “My mother is dead!” I shrieked. “Don’t you dare talk about her!” The men laughed, a sound like grinding glass. “If she’s dead, then you’ll have to pay her debts with your body.” Their hands, caked with dirt and grease, reached for me like serrated blades. I curled into myself, crying, bleeding. I was that little girl again, being bullied on the playground. But this time, my hero wasn’t coming. They ripped my dress. When they saw the tattoos, their eyes lit up with a sick excitement. “Hey! This is the girl from the livestream! Come on, boys, let’s see what Sharon’s leftovers taste like!” I sobbed, my sweat mixing with the blood on my skin. My phone, lying on the floor, began to vibrate. I lunged for it, my nails leaving ten bloody tracks on the concrete. Lexi snatched it away and ended the call. She looked at me with chilling indifference. “Give it up, Maya. Who’s left to save you?” She walked out and locked the heavy steel door from the outside. That night, Colin called again. No answer. He opened his GPS tracking app. The signal was pinging from a notorious red-light district near the docks. For money, she’d even go there? He floored the accelerator. As he stepped into the dark alleyway, two men in work clothes brushed past him. “Man, that little bird was something else,” one of them whispered. “Those tattoos… I wanted to sink into every single one of them.” Colin froze. His eyes turned a violent, bloodshot red.