The Forbidden Mark

In Dreams

I stepped off the bus and strode down the lane home, rubbing away the tenderness from the muscles of my shoulders and chest. Tossing my bookbag onto the porch and moving towards evening chores, that uncomfortable set of eyes kept bringing itself to the forefront of my thoughts. Unsettling and confusing, something in the back of my mind knew exactly what it meant. If only my subconcious would stop being a d**k and shared what it knew with my forebrain.

Without any needed forthought, the chickens were given their supper, eggs collected, sheep and pigs watered and fed, and the meowling kitties petted thoroughly all on my typical automated mode. Before I knew it I was back home in my room staring at my reflection in the mirror, wondering who the heck the girl sitting across from me was trying to be.

It was the same girl staring back at me that it always was; same brown eyes, same honey brown hair, same small smile that never seemed to reach her eyes. Maybe what I saw in Jack was simply the reflection of myself that I try ever so desperately to hide. The reserved unhappiness that always seems to touch everything in my life.

It's not as though anything was really bad per say, but the loneliness and resolute minuteness of my life had always cast its shadow on my existence. Even with my friends and family around me, I would still be hollow. Forever empty and forever destined to be no more than a foot note in lifes greatest protagonists.

Throwing supper into the crock pot, another wave of pain radiated from my chest, becoming increasingly more painful as time pressed on. My body began to shiver and become weak. In just a matter of 20 minutes, I had went from feeling relatively normal to freezing alive.

Mom and Dad would be home in a half hour. If nothing else, I was sure my dumb body could hold out til then.

Deciding to warm up under a hot steamy stream of pure heavenly bliss, delicately I stepped into the shower. My flesh felt on fire as my insides became glacier. Another wave of pain swept through me, making me lightheaded and woozy.

This wasn't gonna be good.

Determinately I heaved a breath from my heavy lungs, taking one labored step from the deliciously steamy shower. Promptly collapsing onto the ground with a heavy thud into unconsciousness.

***********

The oh so yummy smell of orange chicken and veg greeted me as I found myself slowly coming to. Somehow I had made it to my bed and was firmly wrapped in a myriad of thick fuzzy blankets. I realized I was still naked underneath, meaning one if not both of my parents had seen me naked.

Ugh gross...

Must've been my day for embarrassments cause damn, luck was totally not on my side.

"Quite the scare you gave us dear." Spoke an all too familiar voice from the doorway. Yep, she totally saw my bare bottom.

"Do you know what happened?"

A large groan erupted from my core, my chest and shoulders tingling with sharp needle-like prickles all along its surface. Once again my flesh was boiling hot, while the three plush blankets cocooning me seemed like mere sheets in effectiveness of chasing these chills away. My stomach flipped uneasily while my bones became geletin and useless.

Hoped to God that it was food poisoning and not something any crazier. Those large green eyes popped into my head briefly, being dismissed just as quickly. as I glanced towards where my mom was and muttered a groaning 'sick... food'.

Mom's brow shot up for a moment before nodding her acceptance and leaving me to my illness. Sighing inwardly, I couldn't do much more than closing already very heavy lids and relinquishing consciousness to the sleep that beckoned.

Maybe my subconcious will come up with some answers.

*********

Amidst the darkness as deep as the horizon I remained weightless, drifting aimlessly from one ebony focus to another. Space and time refused to exist, or possibly existed all at the same time. The force of all the energy and matter at once burst around and through me, creating the sensation of being torn apart and compressed together all at once.

It was like how I would imagined The Big Bang was formed all those billions of years ago.

In an instant my body warped through space. My corporeal form being forced through galaxies and nebula clouds, absorbed into dying stars and dragged into black holes, compressing whatever-the-hell you could call my self faster and faster passed the speed of light and motion until at last I was once again tossed into the void of darkness.

As I once again floated aimlessly through the vast nothingness, a blue ball of light came into view. Focusing my gaze onto what my eyes were trying to tell me, the familiar blue marbled ball of life became clear to my gaze. Yet the more I focused, the less I understood what I was seeing.

Eons of time shifted all over the sphere, sending millenia reeling forward and back indiscrimately through history. Second within second shaped the time of the dinosaurs, flowing into the beginnings of life, shifting into the dying of the planet and back again. Tectonic plates shifted to and fro, Pangea forming into a semblance of the world today and back into a new landmass in the future.

As I focused even further I noticed a strange form of energy encasing the planet. Whisps of forces beyond my understanding caressed the planet with a mind of its own, shifting the miniscule events of Earth back and forth; Twisting time and space effortlessly. The more I focused on this energy, the more I could feel that it was alive in its own way. Alive and in control.

Realization slammed into me within a split second as I could feel this entity's attention pass to me. My oh-f*ck o'meter immediately snapped to 'No hope in hell, you're about to not exist b*tch'.

Within a nano-moment out of time, the entity wrapped itself around me, shifting and shrinking into a more concentrated form of something vaguely humanesque. The more it took form, the massive feelings of affection and care flooded forth over me, making it harder and harder to focus on the being now in front of me. Words that were like the caress of moonlight thundered in a whisper through my head, higher than any octave and lower than any thruming baritone.

Be My Eyes.

The agony of being ripped through space from extreme rapturous wonderment, to carelessly being tossed into the painfully restrictive confines of mortal flesh left an emptiness inside myself.

It hurt to breathe.

It hurt to move.

Is this what it's like to die?

My upper torso felt raw. As though I stayed out in the sun without sunscreen for far too long. A darkness tinged the blankets as though it became wet some time ago. Did I throw up in a delirium? s**t does my effen chest hurt. I rubbed at my shoulders and damn near screamed from the pain.

Taking a bewildered moment to brace for the inevitable bruise that must be there as I glanced beneath the cover. My heart stilled. It didn't make any sense. My what-the-f*ck o'meter was ringing wildly in my head as I looked at my bare chest.

It was covered in dry crusted blood... a freshly carved mark ran around my shoulders and swept elegantly down to my navel. Exactly where it should never be.