“You know what that is, don’t you?”

I’m a little afraid to answer. So I just fix my Patently Insincere Smile on my face and say something noncommittal.

“Why don’t you tell me what you think it is.”

He’s thin and dirty, with that peculiar musty yet acrid odor of a crack user. He has burn marks on his fingers and the web of his thumb. A Caterpillar ball cap is perched on top of a ridiculously large Afro. He’s holding up a flannel shirt, showing me what appears to be an old puncture wound on his left side. One of many such scars.

His pupils are dilated, almost looking like black holes in his muddy brown schlera. He leans in and leers at me and winks.

“Guess.”

Okay. Your dad picked up that scar in Nam, and you inherited it from him.

No, wait. Scratch that. You had your breast implants removed.

Actually, looks like you had a chest tube at one time, probably to go with that bullet scar you have in the front of your chest.

Naaaahhh, that’s too easy.

Wait, I’ve got it! Mary Ellen Moffitt. She broke your heart.

Eventually I just give up and throw out an obvious one. “Uh, a knife wound?”

He shakes his head and gives me a bleary, drug-fogged grin. Beckons me closer. Leans over and whispers in my ear…

“Stigmata.”

I look at him appraisingly and he nods seriously in confirmation.

“Yep, stigmata.” He whispers the word almost reverently, and then asks significantly, “You know what that means, don’t you?

“Yes sir,” I sigh in resignation. “Haldol and lots of paperwork.”

God I love this job…