Painted Skin

A Short Horror Story Inspired by Asian Folklore

St. John’s ICU hummed with cold light and routine.

For four months, Mei Lee kept vigil beside her daughter’s bed. She watched Lily’s chest rise and fall with mechanical precision.

No diagnosis. No cause. Just stillness, as if her daughter had wandered somewhere far and forgot how to return.

“You should go home,” Dr. Afrahim said gently. “We’ll call if anything changes.”

Mei barely looked up. She traced the faded tattoo on her wrist, a protective seal she’d inked during college, pulled from grandmother Nǎinai’s old book. The design had always felt unfinished. A single character, floating. Beautiful, but isolated. She’d once found other sketches in the margins. Back then, the tattoo was rebellion. Now, it felt like memory.

“I’ll stay,” she said.

David arrived with fresh clothes and her laptop. Still trying to keep their lives upright—gym, work, bills. As if routine could substitute for belief.

“You’ve got that presentation tomorrow,” he reminded her, kissing her forehead.

“One more hour,” Mei said, not moving. It had been the same when Lily was born premature. Mei watched. David coped. They protected in different languages.

She opened her laptop but couldn’t focus. Somewhere between one spreadsheet and the next, she drifted.

The week before Lily went on the trip, she had played Chopin until her fingers cramped. The same phrase again and again. Slower, then faster. Laughing when she missed the notes. Later, she teased Mei for mispronouncing a meme. “You’re so extra, mom,” laughing with her whole face. Gone now.

She’d overpacked. First trip alone. Hoodies, too many socks, glitter lip balm she never wore. Mei made her repack twice.

“What if it rains and I have to meet someone’s parents?” Lily had argued, only half joking.

At the airport, she hugged Mei tight and whispered, “Mom, don’t cry, or I might.”

She looked back three times before disappearing past security.

Then, pressure. A twitch. Lily’s fingers.

“Lily?”

Her hand moved again. Eyes blinked against the fluorescents. Voices rushed in, nurses, equipment, beeping. Mei stood frozen as the impossible unfolded.

“Mom?”

“I’m here, baby. I’m right here.”

Dr. Afrahim was flashing a light in Lily’s eyes, his expression oscillating between training and disbelief. “Pupillary response normal. Lily, do you know where you are?”

“Hospital,” Lily said. Too strong, too steady. Some things return too easily.

Dr. Afrahim pulled them aside. “Yesterday’s scan showed minimal activity. Today, she’s awake and coherent.”

He looked shaken. “Honestly? It’s a miracle.”

Lily answered every question, smiled at every joke. But her eyes—flat, dark, no amber flecks—were watching something else.

Mei gathered the few things that they had brought from home. A blanket. Some books. A scuffed backpack. A red silk knot dangled from the zipper, worn thin. She brushed it aside, remembering how she’d snipped the same charm off her own bag in middle school. Embarrassed to look “too Chinese.”

“Can we go home?” Lily asked. Her voice was hers, but the rhythm was off.

“Are you hungry?”

“Hun…gry. Ròu.”

“Ròu? Did she just say…meat?” David muttered.

Mei smiled, but something stirred beneath her ribs. Not fear. Recognition.

Some things wear your child’s face better than others.

Three weeks later, the Lees tried to call it normal. David returned to the lab. Lily went back to school. Mei kept cooking meals no one finished.

Lily sat scrolling through her phone, face flat. A TikTok played softly. An influencer dancing in front of a crumbling shrine with the caption: “When the ghost tour is actually cursed.” The audio hissed in Mandarin, half-buried under reverb: “Wò guǐ, run while you still can.”

Mei froze. She’d never heard the word. She typed it into her phone. Search: wòguǐ — lit. “hollow ghost.” A skin-stealing revenant that feeds on grief. Drawn to the living it once desired. Below the results, every thumbnail burned red. Warnings, not answers. Mei set her phone down. Her pulse ticked louder.

One afternoon, she passed the piano. Closed. Silent. Ballades had once poured through the house like wind.

“Do you want me to find your sheet music?” Mei asked.

“I don’t remember how,” Lily replied, eyes fixed on nothing.

At dinner, Lily bit into a burger with gleeful abandon. She hadn’t done that since a middle school farm trip.

Mei smiled gently. “Didn’t you stop eating meat after—?”

“That was a long time ago.” Lily laughed. Perfect timing, as if copied from memory. It made Mei’s skin crawl.

“She just woke up. Give her time,” David said when Mei voiced her concerns.

“Time isn’t what’s staring through her.”

He rubbed his eyes. “You see ghosts in every shadow.”

“I pay attention,” Mei snapped. “Your parents may have let you run free. Mine taught me to be vigilant.”

“Your parents are superstitious immigrants who see danger around every corner,” David countered. “We have degrees.”

Mei fell silent. Her family had brought their beliefs, their warnings, their rituals for protection.

That night, Mei lit a stick of sandalwood. Not for prayer. Just habit. Her grandmother used to say scent was a bridge. “Even the ancestors get curious,” she’d whisper, lighting incense after bad dreams.

The next evening, Mei made dinner while Lily sat at the kitchen island watching her.

“I’m hungry,” Lily said.

“Dinner’s in twenty. Grab an apple.”

Lily curled her lip. “Feed me, Mother.”

The knife slipped. Blood welled.

Lily didn’t flinch.

“You always hurt yourself when you’re nervous,” she said, tone almost familiar. “Still so careful. Even with sharp things.”

She reached for Mei’s wrist.

The moment skin met skin, the ink on Mei’s inner arm rippled, alive for a second.

Lily jerked back. “What’s that?”

“An old tattoo,” Mei said carefully.

“Where’d you get it?”

“College. It’s nothing. You’ve seen it before.”

But Lily had already turned away. Her face was smooth again. “What’s for dinner?”

The unease didn’t pass. It bloomed.

That night Mei sat in the bathroom with the door locked. The tattoo looked normal. Still, she couldn’t shake what she’d seen. The ink had moved when Lily touched it.

Her grandmother’s voice rose in memory: “Some marks carry power, Mei-Mei. They remember even when we forget.”

Mei called in sick and drove east, past mini-malls and traffic lights, until the city softened into something older. The Temple of Celestial Peace sat wedged between a bubble tea shop and a dog park. Inside, the air was thick with incense and silence.

An old monk appeared in the doorway, robes the color of dried blood.

“Mei Lee,” he said. Not as a greeting but a return.

“You knew my grandmother?”

“Hui-Ying brought you here once. You cried the whole time.”

A faint smile. “I am Chen. She said you’d come when the marks showed themselves.”

In his study, Mei showed him the tattoo.

Chen unrolled a scroll. The edges were brittle. The symbols spiraled like tracks. He tapped a mark near the edge. It matched the faded ink on Mei’s wrist.

“A hùshǒu fú,” he murmured. “Protection. Not common now.”

He scraped a thumbful of hot ash from the brazier and pressed it into Mei’s wrist.

Her skin hissed. Smoke rose with a sharp, burnt-citrus sting. Ash lodged in the blue grooves, completing the ring in ghost-grey.

“What the fu—” She caught herself, swallowed the rest, and forced a smile.

Chen nodded.

“I found it in one of her books,” Mei said. “Got it to piss off my parents.”

Chen smiled but didn’t look up. “She had others. Some patterns weren’t meant to be finished in one lifetime.”

Mei flexed her wrist, ash flaking. “It moved when Lily touched it.”

Chen’s hand froze. “Then it has awakened.”

He studied her. “When did the coma start?”

“She was in Fujian last August. Visited a shrine. Collapsed minutes later.”

Chen lit incense and placed it in the brazier. The smoke curled, then bent unnaturally, pointing east.

“East Lake,” he said.

He unrolled a second parchment. Took a charcoal nub and shaded the blank page until it resembled Lily. Then rubbed it outward. Her face dissolved into hundreds of empty silhouettes.

Mei’s voice cracked. “Why Lily?” Mei asked.

Chen set the paper down. “She stepped in alone. Something in you feared she would.”

“You’re saying it possessed her?”

“Not possession. Replacement. Her spirit is still inside. But fading.”

Mei clutched her wrist. “This is insane. The seal… tried to protect me?”

“It warned you. But one mark cannot defend. You need the full pattern. Armor inked in spirit and pain.”

Chen brushed a drift of ash from the parchment.

“When the last stroke meets the first, the ghost locks inside you. Flinch, and it escapes.”

“I have a family. A job. I can’t just… cover myself in magic tattoos.”

Chen held her gaze.

“Will it hurt?” Mei asked.

“Pain is easy,” he said. “Living with darkness…that’s the sacrifice.”

Mei returned home to find David making lunch. He was laughing at something Lily had said. He looked happier than he had in months.

“Where were you?” he asked. Pleasantly enough, but with a thread of suspicion. “I thought you were sick.”

“Doctor’s appointment,” Mei lied. She watched Lily for a reaction. Her daughter, or the thing wearing her face, just smiled. Blank.

“Everything okay?” David pressed.

“Just stress,” Mei replied. She forced a smile. “They gave me something to help me sleep.”

That night, when David and Lily were asleep and the house felt borrowed, Mei searched.

She found Lin, a tattoo artist who specialized in Chinese seals and spirit wards. The website was plain. No reviews. Just a number.

Mei called.

“Chen told me you’d come,” Lin said.

Lin’s studio looked like a dentist’s office, until you stepped into the back.

The air shifted. Scrolls lined the walls. Candles flickered without breeze. Incense threaded through the room, not sweet but sharp, like memory.

“Show me the seal,” Lin said, pulling on gloves. No small talk.

She examined the tattoo like an archaeologist. “Haven’t seen one of these in years. Not since my brother.”

“What happened to him?”

“He wasn’t as lucky,” she said. No elaboration.

“This is rare work. Your grandmother chose well.”

“My grandmother didn’t choose this,” Mei insisted. “I did.”

Lin smiled knowingly. “Sometimes our hands are guided by those who love us most.”

Lin unrolled a parchment with fluid care. The designs looked less like art, more like circuitry.

Lin lit three sticks of black incense, held each above a different illustration. The smoke curled differently over each one—rising, swirling, collapsing inward. “Together, they trap. Alone, they whisper.”

Mei swallowed. “How many sessions?”

“We start today. To finish? Seven.”

“And when it’s done?”

Lin didn’t answer. Just loaded the needle.

The pain was intense but oddly centering. Mei gritted her teeth. With each line, it felt like something buried was being pulled closer to the surface, not summoned, just… seen.

When Lin left her forearm was wrapped in bandages beneath her long-sleeved blouse.

That night, Lily sniffed the air when Mei walked in. “You smell like smoke and…something sharp.”

“Incense from the pharmacy,” Mei said.

“You’re…changing,” Lily said flatly. “I can feel it.”

Mei smiled. “Good.”

Lily’s eyes narrowed. “What are you up to…Mother?”

“Just taking care of my family,” Mei replied, maintaining eye contact despite the chill that ran through her.

That night, Mei dreamed of Lily sitting at the piano, her back to the room. Music spilled from the keys, too perfect, too smooth. Mei stepped closer. Lily turned. Her face was blank parchment, no features, no mouth. Then the skin peeled off in a single sheet, revealing an inked replica beneath, eyes too dark, mouth too wide, symbols crawling across her cheeks like veins.

“You did this,” it whispered without lips.

Mei awoke gasping, her forearm burning beneath the bandages. In the bathroom’s dim light, she peeled them away and froze.

The ink was shifting, aligning. Thin lines snaked along her arm. Symbols slid into place like puzzle pieces locking shut.

She reached for her phone, tried to film it. By the time the screen focused, the movement had stopped.

Just ink. Still.

Then, faintly, Lily’s voice…“Mom? Help me. I don’t know where I am.”

Skin remembers. Pain teaches. The ink moves with purpose.

The next afternoon, a neighbor rang the bell. Mei opened the door to find Mrs. Tran from three houses down. Her face was pale.

“I think your daughter may have hurt my son,” she said. “They were playing. Then she just scratched his face. He said she smiled the whole time.”

“Across his eye,” she added. “Urgent care said it might not heal right. He’s twelve.”

Mei apologized. Then again. Promised to check on things. She closed the door slowly.

Inside, Lily sat on the couch eating yogurt like nothing happened. “He was annoying,” she said flatly. “Boys heal.”

Mei stared. “That’s not how you talk about people.”

Lily looked up. Her smile was empty. “About… people,” she echoed.

That night, David said the boy probably exaggerated. But something in his voice had cracked.

Later, Mei woke to the hum of the printer. David stood over it, watching a grainy black-and-white printout emerge—doorbell footage of Lily, staring into the camera, unmoving.

He rewound the clip on his laptop, slower this time. A flicker. Something off. Then stillness.

The printout showed only her blank face. He didn’t say anything. Just took it and folded it into his wallet.

On the way back to bed, Mei paused at Lily’s door. Lily lay still, eyes closed. Her breath even. Mei reached for the doorknob, then froze.

Lily’s mouth moved. Not a word. Just the shape of one.

Mei stepped closer.

Again, barely visible, Lily’s lips formed a soundless whisper. It took a moment to place it. Mei’s name.

Not “Mom.”

“Mei.”

Her throat tightened.

Lily’s eyes fluttered once, then stilled.

Mei backed out and closed the door gently. She sat in the hallway, waiting for the air to feel normal again. It didn’t.

The next day David left work early. He drove to a small temple he’d found on Google.

The incense was free. He lit one and fumbled the stick into a chipped urn overflowing with ash. He propped Lily’s photo up next to it.

“If anyone’s listening…” he muttered. “Just…don’t let her be….”

Wind brushed the back of his neck. He paused.

Nothing answered. Just silence that felt like proof. But proof of what?

Over the next few weeks, the marks climbed her body like vines. Up her forearm. Over her shoulder. Down her ribs.

Mei scheduled meetings around pain. She wore long sleeves. Avoided mirrors. Avoided touch. Her body no longer felt like hers. But her purpose did.

David grew more cheerful. Lily grew bolder.

One night, David lingered in the hallway outside Lily’s room. He watched her through the crack in the door.

She sat perfectly still in bed. Light off. Eyes open.

When he stepped inside, she smiled. But it landed a second too late. He said nothing. Just backed out slowly, like he’d forgotten why he came.

At dinner, she mocked Mei’s old stories. “You said I had Nǎinai’s laugh. When did you lose yours?”

Mei hesitated.

“Do you even remember what it sounded like?” Lily asked. “Your mother’s laugh?”

Mei blinked.

“I do,” Lily said. “But only because you don’t.”

Later that night, David dismissed Mei’s concerns. “You’re paranoid,” David said. “You’re disappearing.”

“I’m preparing,” Mei answered.

“For what?”

“To bring our daughter back.”

The incidents escalated. Mei found blood in the bathroom sink. Just a smear. Dark. Easy to miss.

Under the sink, in a tin of hair ties, she found scissors. Dull-tipped, rusted. The blades were sticky. Not red. Black.

One of her old earrings was wrapped once around the handle. Gold. Bent open like a hook.

When she asked Lily about it, her daughter looked up slowly. “It wanted to see how much I could feel.”

“What did?”

Lily’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t pretend you don’t know.”

Mei threw the scissors in the trash that night. Then checked the bin again at midnight. Just to be sure.

“Maybe… it’s trauma,” David said the next day. But his voice had lost its edge.

Mei’s tattoos were nearly complete. Only the final seal remained. The strongest mark. It would go over her heart.

Lin prepared the needles. She looked at Mei. “Once the last seal is inked, it drops the mask.”

Mei’s voice shook. “I’ll be ready.”

“I’ve inked power into moguls, monks, criminals. But it only holds if you believe more than it does.”

Mei thought of all the ways she had tried to protect Lily. The arguments with David. The fear she’d turned into her own mother.

She thought of how her childhood clashed with the world she’d built. And the damage she might have passed down without meaning to.

“I don’t have a choice,” she said. “Whatever is wearing my daughter’s face is destroying my family. I need to get her back.”

The final tattoo hurt the most. As Lin worked, Mei drifted.

Memories surfaced. Her grandmother’s rituals. The ones she’d once called superstition. Her mother’s vigilance. The kind she resented, then absorbed. And Lily, pulling away. Reaching for freedom Mei hadn’t known how to give.

When it was done, Mei felt different. More grounded. More hers. Not just her body, but her blood. Not just her past, but her purpose.

Mei returned home to the smell of garlic and something synthetic. David was cooking. Lily sat at the counter, watching him like a director on set.

“Where were you?” David asked. His voice was pleasant but off-key.

“Doctor’s appointment,” Mei lied.

Lily’s head tilted, just slightly. “You don’t look sick.”

Mei didn’t answer. She looked at Lily’s reflection in the microwave. Smile too symmetrical.

After dinner, they left for a movie. Mei stayed behind.

She unpacked her grandmother’s talismans and placed them around the house. Above doors. Beneath chairs. One she tucked on the bookshelf, just behind Lily’s baby photo. Just in case.

She didn’t expect them to work. But she needed them to witness.

They returned laughing. “Lily wanted father-daughter time,” David said. “We even got milk ice. You should’ve come.”

“You didn’t ask before,” Mei said.

“You’ve been…busy.”

Mei didn’t answer. She watched the space between them. David’s body leaned toward Lily, the way fathers do. But something in him was pulling back.

After David went upstairs, Lily turned.

“You finished…it,” she said, eyes landing on Mei’s chest.

“Yes.”

“That was a mistake.”

“I’ve protected myself,” Mei replied calmly. “And I’m going to get my daughter back.”

“She’s drifting,” the thing said through Lily’s mouth. “Soon, just a shadow.”

It smiled wide. “And he’s next. You fear that, don’t you?” The laugh came slow, cracked at the edges. Not Lily’s.

“You underestimate a mother’s love,” Mei said. Her voice was steady despite her racing heart.

“Love?” It tilted Lily’s head. “You’re the cage she lived in.”

“Maybe,” Mei said. “But even cages can hold light. And she’s still in there.”

“She’s gone. What you raised couldn’t survive freedom.”

And Mei saw it—what happened at East Lake. Lily, alone. A moment of freedom Mei had never allowed. The shrine. The risk. The cost.

Mei’s rules hadn’t protected her. They had sent her in unarmed.

The revelation staggered her, and the entity moved. It lunged, hands outstretched.

The schema lit. Threads flared from wrist to throat like fire across a fuse. For the first time, she felt the design in full.

The entity recoiled with a shriek. “These symbols? These scratches?” it snarled. Lily’s face twisted. “I’ve devoured civilizations while your ancestors cowered in caves.”

“Then you know,” Mei said, her voice calm and rising, “a mother’s love is older still.”

The oldest hungers don’t want food. They want company.

The air cracked. Lamps burst. Glass spidered across the floor. Lily’s body convulsed. Jerky. Wrong. The thing inside her dropped the smile.

Its voice deepened. “You want her back? Come get her.”

David appeared in the doorway. His face was all horror.

“What’s happening?” he yelled.

“That’s not Lily,” Mei shouted.

“Mei, this is… this is delusional. You need help.”

The entity turned to him, face soft with mock pity. “Daddy, she’s scaring me.”

But then, it slipped. A flicker. A shadow beneath the skin.

David froze. Now, the proof looked back.

“Where’s Lily?” he mumbled.

“Still inside,” Mei said. “But not for long.”

David moved on instinct. He stepped between them, arms raised.

“Stop…”

The thing struck him hard across the chest. He hit the floor with a thud, wind knocked out of him.

It turned and grabbed his neck. Eyes black with hunger.

Mei’s tattoos lit like a constellation. Her body burned, but the lines held. Memory surged. Of mothers before her. Of hands held too tight and let go too soon.

David stirred where he’d landed. Groggy. Bleeding. He looked at Mei. Then at Lily, or what was inside her. Something in him changed.

He searched through the wreckage. Found the pouch Mei had hidden. He paused. His thumb brushed the worn fabric.

Then he tossed it to her. Their eyes met. Mei caught it. Pressed it to the burning seal over her heart. The air twisted.

“Take me instead,” she said. “Come for me.”

The thing smiled. “Confess, mā,” it cooed. “The ink meant more than Lily.”

David’s eyes locked on hers. He saw the glowing symbols at her wrists and collar. ‘Mei…what have you done?”

“What was necessary,” she said. “That’s not Lily. It hasn’t been her since she woke up.”

“She needs help, Daddy,” the entity whispered. “She’s going to hurt me.”

“Look at her, David!” Mei cried. “Really look! That’s not our daughter!”

The thing’s grip tightened. David gasped. Something flickered in his eyes: recognition, then horror.

“Lily?” he choked.

“Fading,” Mei said. Her tattoos burned brighter. “I can save her, but you have to trust me.”

The entity knew it was losing control. It shoved David aside with inhuman strength. He crashed into the TV.

Then it turned to Mei. It lunged. They collided. And the room vanished.

Mei stood in a void stitched from shadow. The air pulsed with breath and memory. Whispers moved through it in languages she didn’t know but somehow understood.

The Wòguǐ took form. It never settled. Faces flickered across its skin: old men, young girls, mothers, soldiers. Each one stared without blinking.

“These are mine,” it said in Mei’s voice. “They feed me with their fear.”

It conjured Lily in broken flashes. Shut doors. Unanswered calls. Moments Mei once mistook for safety.

“You taught her fear… not freedom,” the Wòguǐ hissed.

From somewhere deeper, Lily’s voice emerged. “I thought she hated me.” She was curled in shadow, knees drawn tight.

Another voice answered. Not hers. Not the ghost’s. “She feared losing you.”

Lily blinked. “Then why did she let me go?”

No answer. Only silence thickening around her.

“Mā?”

Mei turned. A thin thread of light stretched through the dark.

Lily stood at the edge of it. Translucent. Smoke-like. Tethered by something Mei couldn’t see.

“I’m sorry,” Lily whispered. “I shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“No,” Mei said. “I should have taught you how to walk with your head high.”

The Wòguǐ shrieked. The void roared.

It tried to drown her in visions. David grieving. Lily fading. The house, empty.

But Mei stepped forward. “You feed on guilt,” she said. “But you starve on truth.”

She touched the final seal over her heart. A thread of red light unwound. Thin as hair. Bright as blood. It floated forward, then split, weaving itself into the air.

“Then take me.”

The Wòguǐ snarled. “Thread can’t hold me.”

Mei took another step. The net tightened. The creature thrashed.

It poured into her. Smoke trailing. Claws dragging.

The seals burned closed. The pain was sharp. But it held.

Mei collapsed. Beside her, Lily gasped. Air rushed in. Amber returned to her eyes like light waking from sleep.

“Daddy?”

David reached her. He found a clean dish towel and pressed it to the seals winding up Mei’s arm.

The ink still pulsed. Tiny, deliberate beats beneath burned skin. Each breath came slower. But beneath the pain, something else stirred.

Mei didn’t flinch. Her eyes stayed open, steady.

David slid to the floor beside her. They didn’t speak.

Outside, a sprinkler clicked on. Water sprayed across the driveway like faint applause.

Three months later, the house was quieter. Lily was back in school. The nightmares came less often, though she couldn’t name what haunted them.

David hovered. Less certain. More present. He had started asking questions he used to dismiss.

Mei no longer wore long sleeves at home. The tattoos had stopped glowing but never stopped shifting. Like maps slowly redrawing themselves.

Every few weeks, she returned to Master Chen. For reinforcement. For containment.

Lily hunched over the counter, earbuds leaking a sugary K-pop hook. She stirred instant ramen in a chipped bowl her mother hated. Mei wrinkled her nose at the chorus. “That song is… extra,” she said, testing the word Lily once used to mock her.

Lily rolled her eyes but didn’t take the earbuds out. “You’re so cringe.”

One morning, as sunlight hit the breakfast table, David watched Mei smooth ointment over her forearm.

“Does it… still speak to you?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” Mei said.

“I should’ve listened to you.”

“We both wanted to believe she was okay,” she said. “Belief isn’t always the right measure.”

Sometimes, her reflection glitched. A delay in her smile. Eyes that didn’t quite track.

The hallway light flickered when she passed. Always the same bulb. The electrician said it was fine. She stopped asking.

And once, in the middle of the night, she awoke gasping. Speaking a language she didn’t know. By morning, it was gone. But Lily had stood in the doorway, watching.

One evening, Lily lingered at the edge of Mei’s study. “Do we still have that music book?”

Mei turned, surprised. “It’s in the piano bench.”

“I don’t remember how to play,” Lily said. “But I want to know what it feels like. To sit there again.”

Mei nodded. “That’s enough.”

Lily had started walking home alone again. Not far. Mei used to wait at the corner, pretending not to. Now she stayed inside. She watched once through the window. Then made herself stop.

That afternoon, Lily came in, cheeks pink from wind. She held a crushed dandelion. Mei took her backpack. Checked the red knot still tied to the zipper.

“For you,” Lily said, setting the flower on the counter.

Mei smiled. Didn’t ask about the walk.

Even now, the marks along her ribs sometimes warmed. Like something inside was stretching in its sleep. But it stayed quiet.

Before bed Mei studied the network etched across her skin. One mark near her collarbone shimmered faintly.

She reached for her pendant out of habit, then stopped. Her fingers hovered above the glow. The mark looked unfamiliar. Tighter strokes. Not the one she remembered from Lin’s needle. A voice whispered inside her. It used her voice. “He doesn’t trust you.”

Mei touched the seal. “You’re not getting out,” she whispered. “You chose the wrong mother.”

From the hallway, Lily’s voice called softly. “Mom?”

Mei opened the door. Lily stood there, eyes cloudy from sleep.

“Sometimes… when I dream,” Lily said, “I feel something behind you. Like it’s watching me. But it doesn’t come closer.”

Mei almost reached to brush back her hair. Almost.

But Lily wasn’t porcelain anymore.

Instead, she knelt and touched her daughter’s face. “That’s because it’s mine now.”

Lily didn’t ask what it meant. She just nodded and went back to bed.

The next morning, Lily was getting ready to leave for school. Mei almost reminded her to take her jacket. But the girl was already out the door.

Outside, the city breathed and blinked and moved on.

Inside, something waited.

Not silent. Not free. But held.

And Mei had learned how to hold it.

Sometimes, it whispered in her voice.

***

Author’s Note:

Painted Skin reflects an ongoing interest of mine in cultural diaspora, particularly how Asian beliefs and folklore persist and adapt within modern life. Inspired by variations of the wǔ guǐ, it’s ultimately a story about protection, inheritance, and what we choose to carry for the people we love.