When Mauve tattooed the letter ‘M’ on her upper left arm, everyone simply assumed that she had tattooed the first letter of her name.

It was a nice tattoo.  Three inches wide and four inches long, the thin black outline of the ‘M’ was entwined with ivy spiralling up and down its edges.  It was a piece of art, no one denied that.

But when a second ‘M’ popped up right below the first one, some eyebrows were raised, some heads got cocked to the side.

‘Your initials, right? Mauve…it’s Martins, isn’t it?’ Mauve nodded and smiled thinly the first time someone asked that.  Then she just nodded.

The second ‘M’ had daisies sprouting out of the two parallel lines on the side.  The outline was black again, but the daisies were white with a yellow centre.  All in all, it complemented the green ivy quite well.

The scabs on the daisies hadn’t completely healed when a third ‘M’ materialised half way down Mauve’s left arm etched in front of a large pink lily.

Three ‘M’s.  Eyebrows were drawn in quizzical expressions.  Mauve just shrugged.

*

In the flat she shares with no-one, Mauve washes blood off her hands in the kitchen sink, brushing away at her fingernails using the steel, wiry sponge she usually uses to scrub pots with.

She wipes her hands on the dish towel and sits at the kitchen table where a High School yearbook is open.   A red cross quarters each of three different faces; Ivy Reynolds, Daisy Stevens, Lily O’Keefe.

Mauve grabs the red pen buried in the middle of the open book.  A smile snails its way up each cheek as another face is crossed; stroke, stroke.  Samara Lawrence.

Mauve reaches for a blank paper, sketches the four-by-three inch ‘M’ – her own chosen brand for ‘Murderer’ – and then pauses.  The pen hovers motionless for some long seconds until Mauve’s head shoots up, panic clouding her expression.

‘Samara…Samara…Samara…how the hell am I gonna pull this one off?’

 —

For Trifecta.  The word is BRAND.

This comes after a week-long  break from blogging…  *snigger-snigger* I was on holiday and ooohh have I enjoyed it!  ^__^

I missed writing though, so I’m glad I’m back with you all.