White-Hot

The blade flicked open. No glint, no cinematic gleam—just a dull, dirty edge, meant for work, not show. A tool of necessity. A thing designed to cut, to rend, to ruin.

The man who held it didn’t hesitate. 

I ran but he was faster. I struggled, but he was stronger. 

A hand like iron clamped around my wrist, twisting. The snap came first, an awful, sickening pop—a delay—one frozen heartbeat—before the pain erupted, jagged and raw. I gasped, or maybe I screamed, but it didn’t matter. The knife was already coming down.

The first cut was almost surgical across my wrist. A line drawn with precision, a calculated incision. The second was not. He sawed. Not with rage, not with frenzied brutality—just efficiency, as if carving through flesh was no different than carving through wood. Skin split. Muscle shredded. Tendon frayed like a snapped guitar string. My fingers, those small, simple things I had never given much thought to, splayed open like a grotesque flower, blooming crimson.

The third and fourth strikes, I did not feel.

By then, the pain had become something else—a color.

Not red. Not even black.

White-Hot.

Blinding. All-consuming. An inferno swallowing everything, drowning out my screams, my thoughts, my very self. It did not allow for reason, for escape, for anything beyond its searing grasp.

White-Hot pain.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The knife disappeared. Footsteps retreated. Cold rushed in. Wet pavement kissed my cheek. My body would not move.

Fear settled in, its presence as stark as the pain. It had no mercy. No end.

A Good Samaritan found me. An ambulance. Sirens. Hands pressing, voices shouting. Lights too bright, too sharp.

The hospital was sterile. White. Not the burning, searing white of pain, but an indifferent, clinical blankness. Doctors hovered. Questions were asked. Did I see his face? Did I fight back? Did I know why? He wanted my purse. My purse got tangled, which made him enraged. So he tried to cut it off me, but the blade cut me too. The words barely registered. They did not matter. What mattered was the absence. The space where my strength had once been. The way my hand trembled when I tried to move. The way my body felt was foreign, unfamiliar. A ruined thing. 

One thousand eight hundred twenty-five stitches. Each day, they look like ugly, grotesque, jagged, white lines over my body.

Fifteen years later.

I sat in my car, engine running, hands locked on the wheel. My wrist had healed. Mostly. The doctors said I’d never regain full function. I had proved them wrong. Years of surgeries, therapy, forcing stiff fingers to remember their purpose. Learning to write again. To hold. To grip. To fight.

But the scars never faded.

Neither did the memory.

I had agreed to give a speech on resilience. Strength. Overcoming fear.

But I couldn’t step out of the car.

I had told myself I would drive by first. Just once. Just a glance at the alley. But as I neared the street, my chest locked tight. My breath came in short, sharp gasps. My vision blurred. My ears rang.

My grip on the wheel turned my knuckles white. White. White-Hot.

The same color as before.

I went home. Got help. Reinforcements.

We pulled into a parking lot a block away and killed the engine. The building loomed ahead—bright, clean, new. The alley was still there, but it was different. Fresh paint. No dumpsters. The city had erased what it could.

But I still bore the marks.

We sat in silence, staring at the entrance. People walked in, unaware. Carefree.

I had given speeches before. I had stood in front of thousands. But this—this was different.

This was the place where I bled. 

I reached for the door handle. Hesitated. Then forced myself out.

The walk across the parking lot was the longest of my life. Every step was a war—against the ghosts that whispered, against the memory of that blade, against the color of fear curling at the edges of my vision.

But we walked. I turned away several times, tears streaming down my face. My body convulsed. 

We walked through the doors. Through the waiting crowd. Onto the stage.

The lights hit me.

White-Hot.

For a moment, the fear threatened to consume me. It pressed against my ribs, clawed at my throat, demanded that I turn, that I run.

But I did not.

I stared at the crowd. At their expectant faces. At their unknowing eyes. They did not know what it meant to stand here. To breathe in this space. To speak in the place where my voice had once been nothing but a scream swallowed by the night.

But I knew.

The microphone was cool in my grasp. My breath steadied.

I spoke.

And for the first time in fifteen years, the White-Hot did not own me.

My voice carried, steady, strong. I told them about pain. About survival. About fear so great it steals your breath, your voice, your very soul. I told them about the years of clawing my way back. About the nights, I woke up choking on memories. About the countless times I almost didn’t fight. Almost didn’t move. Almost let the fear win. I almost lost my life over a purse.

But I also told them about resilience. About the human spirit. About how healing is not a straight path but a jagged one, full of wrong turns and broken moments. I told them about strength—not the kind that comes from muscles or bravado, but the quiet kind, the kind that comes from standing back up, from walking into the fire even when every fiber of your being screams for you to run.

I told them about the White-Hot.

And when I finished, when the last word left my lips and silence settled over the room, I did not tremble. I did not shrink.

I stood in the place where I bled, and I did not burn. I won.