The Marked

I was stalking the streets a little after dark. An overwhelming presence shadowed my steps, I was moving so fast—almost like I was gliding. Feet not touching ground. It was all so strange... The brisk breeze was stabbing my skin like a hundred needles digging in. I stopped, hearing a shuffling noise from the alley I'd just walked past. My lips parted. I wanted to turn around and walk to the alley's mouth, see what had made the noise.

Probably a cat, I chanted. I tried for a new step forward. My muscles didn't budge. Not to take me down the street. What...? I thought, but it was vague, something that melted into a void as a feeling stronger than anything I'd ever felt came pounding against my skull. I was already standing in the middle of the alley, searching out with a quick calculated gaze. My fingers were twitching slightly, like I was counting the tiny multitude of noises in the city and ruling them when they didn't match what I was hunting down.

Hunting? A part of my mind felt subdued, foggy, and another I didn't recognize was assuming control. I didn't have the smallest clue how to hunt or why I would even want to hunt anything. My shoulder muscles tensed. My body whipped around with perfect timing. I grabbed a ghostly blur, smashing it against a wall, delivering an expert kick to his or hers back—the person was lithe—and I didn't just stop there. No. A drive burned now, I could feel my blood kicking with joy, my heart racing as my breathing picked up and I pulled out a combat knife from under a sleeve. I stabbed the person's throat—deep. I felt the blade digging in. A screech of pain bellowed in darkness. The muddy side of my brain whispered something I couldn't understand, the racing blood was speaking loudly, telling me to draw the knife around the neck and snap it. To chop it off later.

Twist. Twist. Dig deeper. Push in, break the bone. Do it. Twist, twist. Cutting skin, cutting veins, arteries, keep going. All around you go. You need to. This is how it's done. Then kill, split bone. Rip the head. Come now, do it. A little bit more, it's getting messy but it's okay, it'll improve. This is show and tell, it's alright. You are meant to.

Blurs of red. Blurs of sparkling lights flew past me. Or was I flying past them? Smell the air. Copper. Slightly putrid. Blood? Yes, but there's more. Smell. Yes, more. It smelled like the morgue. Decomposing flesh. I think I ran a lot. I think I leaped. Something coaxed me to do it, like I was meant to behave like a cat or an experienced gymnast. The world wasn't still. It was going so fast. Was this what bath salts put you through? The smell, Chloe. Smell it. Blood? No, not that. Isolate. I sniffed, cocking my head in the direction of all the different scents. Gas pollution, cheap perfumes, colognes, hot-dog stands and a hundred different foods coming from a ton different restaurants. Something heated along my back. My eyes slipped open and I moved with grace and agility again. Heading for the source of salty-mixed-sweet scent that sent my senses into a frenzy. It's the same scent from the person in the alley.

I kicked my feet into the floor, stumbling close to the ledge of a building. I looked up to the sky and saw everything was upside down. The sky below my feet and the city high up. Where's the gravity? I thought sluggishly. How the hell had San Francisco gone topsy-turvy on me? How was any of this... possible? I watched, breathing slowly, the Golden Bridge above me. It all reverted when I looked down at my shaking hands. Bloody, red hands. Like I'd been finger-painting. The world spun, melting down to nothing but mixed colors. Swirling. Then, like someone pulled the bathtub's plug, it all drained away and I was left in the dark staring at a blooming flower. It was pink. I'd... seen it before. While it opened into a beautiful lotus the darkness was beat by radiance and my brain assaulted by a million voices.

"Venator..." I gasped, shooting awake, hands fisted in my blankets. I choked on saliva. Get a grip, I told myself forcing the lump to go down. I was in my room. It's just my room. It was a dream, it was... I turned my hands up with a swelled heart with horror. They... my hands... They were clean. They're clean, oh God. Thank... Thank God. I closed them, doing the same to my eyes. This was okay. They were dreams, very bad dreams. But I wasn't going out and killing anyone, nope. I wasn't jumping off buildings and... smelling salty-sweet, whatever it meant. Nothing, I told myself, you've been delusional, Chloe.

Is the freaky tattoo on your back also a delusion? Hmm? I let out a raged breath, relaxing my fingers and rolling out my shoulders to release the pent-up tension. My t-shirt clung to my skin like crazy, which didn't come as a big surprise since my hairline was pouring. Twisting at the waist, I tapped my phone's screen. I still had an hour before I needed to get ready for school, great. I knew shoving my head under a pillow wouldn't make me calm down and there was no way I'd fall asleep, so, I threw back the covers and walked with unsteady legs toward my small bathroom.

This was nightmare number eight since my birthday. It was getting ridiculous and I knew I should tell someone, preferably Mom, since you know, she's a freaking doctor! But I... What would I say? 'Mom look at this tattoo! Since it showed up—yes, it came from nowhere, just drew itself on my back and won't go away no matter how much I scrub at it—I've been having terrible dreams of stalking people.' None of the other nightmares had been so brutal, though. I'd never killed... I braced myself on the sink, brown eyes cast down, watching the drain like it was the most interesting thing the world had to offer. I'd killed someone in my dream this time. I couldn't remember all the details but... I'd been savage. Cruel. Merciless. It... scared the living hell out of me. With trembling hands I grabbed at my face and screamed inwardly, wishing I could get away with actually shouting out loud. I needed to vent. But Mom was sleeping off a God-knows-how-long shift, so I wouldn't risk her hearing. Though, once she was down for the count, she slept like a rock.

Ignoring the chill, I took off my t-shirt and stared at the tattoo's reflection in the mirror, over my shoulder. How was I going to explain this? Eventually someone would see. Jenna and I got dressed up together for parties. Mom could walk-in on me getting dressed, the woman knew no boundaries. Wade and I could get past the just kissing and fooling around stage and the clothes could come off... I sighed. The only viable explanation that wouldn't send me to a psyche ward, was to say I'd gone and done it on purpose.

I climbed into the shower after shimming my sleeping shorts and let the water rain down. Soon, vapor fogged up the glass shower door. I leaned my head against the tiles. There was something in common in these dreams, my brain raced. The pink lotus. Racing down streets at night. Moving with perfect grace. Having a calculating gaze. The smell was new, though. And... I'd whispered something after waking up. My brows puckered. What had it been? No matter how I tried, I couldn't get the word to pop up, only gave myself a headache. Like I hadn't been getting plenty of those. Because dreams weren't enough, I'd been having massive headaches. Like I heard interference on all sides. It was worse in crowds, when I was alone with Wade, Jenna or Mom it wasn't too bad. It came and went, a flimsy thought with buzzing in the background.

***

Be cool, I told myself sitting down at my desk. Jenna had been extra chatty today and when she'd noticed I'd been extremely quiet, never once interrupting her, the bell rang and I'd rushed off to class. Totally being cool. Yeah, right. I wanted to bury my head six-feet under and pray to the powers that be that once I came up for air, I'd be normal again. No strange tattoo. No deep-shit dreams. And...

I gritted my teeth to cage a groan. Chatter rung inside my mind, jumbled radio frequencies altogether, pushing inside my skull and making it impossible to focus on... pretty much anything. My fingers closed hard around my pencil. Why wouldn't it stop? What even was this...

Should I call Jessie back? He's nice enough... I wouldn't mind doing it with—

Maybe I should've painted them green...

Why do I need this shit? It's not like I'm ever moving to Spain.

Always with the chit-chatter. Oh, God. Why couldn't I have listened to Mom and go into accounting?

Thwack.

The pencil breaking in half got my attention for a second. I gawked at it, eyes wide. Oh shit. Oh man. What... What in the actual hell...?

What's wrong with her? Huh. She's looking at me... Smile? Yeah, smiling is good.

"Hey," Heather whispered with a hunky-dory smile. But I knew she was going to smile before she did it. She said so and—had she sighed 'huh' in a 'why does Chloe look like a freak' way? Why is she looking at me like that? Ah! Maybe I have coffee stains on my teeth! "Huh... Hey, Chloe? Do you need a pencil?"

"Oh. No. No, it's fine." I tossed the half-snapped pencil aside pulling out a pen. So long as this one didn't break. I cleared my voice. "I heard there's going to be a pop-quiz today in Calc."

"Really?" she turned horrified at the news.

I nodded, trying to shut out whatever my strangely wired brain seemed to be picking up. This wasn't happening, it couldn't be. The more you acknowledged something, the more power it gained. So, this wasn't real. Nope. Wasn't going to pay attention to it. Just talking to Heather in Spanish class. Nothing wrong with this picture.

"Wade heard it from Carson. I think he caught Mr. Peterson talking about it with coach Jones." Mr. Peterson had a thing for surprises. The really bad kind. I heard his class was the toughest out of all math electives. Which kinda sucked—

Coach Jones. He is so freaking hot. Too bad he's a teacher... Though, he's not really old—

No. No. Block it. Just ignore. Ignore? Ignore what? There's absolutely nothing happening!

"That blows. I already failed Peterson's first quiz." Heather hissed, like she hadn't just said something completely inappropriate about a teacher. Said it? Her lips hadn't moved. She hadn't talked. Or had she? My eyebrows furrowed and I bit my bottom lip. "Are you alright, Chloe?"

"Sorry. What?"

"I asked if you were okay? You look pale and... you're sweating." With my free hand I felt along my forehead. It was sticky for sure. I swallowed. There was nothing wrong. This was going to be a normal day. "Chloe?"

I blinked.

"I'm fine. Just a little fever. I caught a nasty virus last week." I shrugged trying to make it seem nonchalant. Like I wasn't straight up losing my sanity.

She's sick? Ew. Hope I don't catch it. Monica's party's this week and it's going to be awesome for me and Caleb to get together—

"Oh. I hope you get better." Heather smiled a little to tightly, trying to scoot away in her chair.

Saving her further worries of catching my no-longer existing virus, I turned to the front, looking down at the broken pencil. I took a deep breath. Our Spanish teacher made everyone quiet down and began by greeting us with Buenos días—Good morning—and carried on in a fluent enough accent. Stopping when she added some new word, saying it in English and asking us to repeat it. We weren't fifteen minutes into her class and I was still tilting my head side-ways, as if that would get rid of all the voices. Voices. They were getting clearer now that I'd focused on talking with Heather. I'd never had a tick, but drumming my fingers was rapidly becoming a bad habit. Ms. Moore's lips moved and her words slowly bled into the storm of whispers echoing in my brain. I couldn't even hear myself think.

My index finger stopped inches from thumping on the table for the gazillion time. Hear myself think. Hear. Think. I recognized Carson's voice—slightly gruff—among others. I cocked my head discretely and locked eyes on him. He looked pretty much void. Eyes half-lidded, slumped in his chair. His lips weren't moving and still I could hear him and the more I looked at him, focused on only him, his voice eclipsed the others. He was singing some lyrics. I drew a big breath and took a wild chance of getting a little freak stamp from Heather.

"Hey," I called softly, lips in what I hoped was a normalish smile. She turned toward me, braid falling over a shoulder as she leaned a little closer. "Your teeth look fine." Heather's lips pressed tightly. Then they parted for a second, closing and opening again. Lost for words. "You said something about coffee stains? But they're fine. I forgot to tell you, must be the fever making me a little spacey." I gave a forced chuckle.

"I—Thanks!" Heather rasped out, stunned. I turned forward, shutting up, but I kept thinking about Heather. Her voice. And sure enough, it came: Did I say that out loud? God, that's embarrassing!

It was going to take a lot more convincing that I was okay now. Because... I wasn't hearing random sounds. All the muddled frequencies were voices. Inside my head. But they weren't coming from my subconscious. I wasn't making them up. They were thoughts. Other people's.

I sunk in my chair, floored.