A Mark Unwilling

by Candace Wondrak

  Except me.

  I roll down the window, heaving whatever food I had left in my stomach onto the driveway. My head still out the window, I turn to look at the mansion. A blast of black air, thick with disease-carrying insects, knocks all the second-story windows out in a loud blast. The cloud swirls, following us at high speeds.

  “Faster, Warlock,” Mike says from the front seat, “faster!”

  “It’s a Ford Escape, not a racecar,” David hisses, flooring the car.

  As we pass the black iron gate, the bugs swirl to a halt. They’re confined to my parents’ property. From the blown-out windows, the Horseman sits on his steed, holding his balancing scales and watching us go. The scales are once more in balance.

  Wiping my mouth, I retreat my head back into the car, feeling the need to scream. As my mouth opens to let loose something—either a scream or, yes, a swearword—a sharp, unmistakable pain surfaces on my wrists. In fact, both my arms feel like death incarnate. I wince out loud, muttering something like “Oh my God,” even if my voice is weak, and now the last thing I want to do is scream.

  Screaming would only make it worse, my gut tells me.

  Mom whispers, “Dear Lord,” pulling Josefina closer to her as the little girl shrieks beside me. Her eyes stare holes through me, as if she’s judging me for something I have no control over.

  “What’s going on back there?” David asks, his eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.

  Mike turns around, spots me and says, “Shit. Pull over!”

  David does so, and everybody piles out of the car, save for me. I sit there, sweating, in extreme pain, and wonder why the heck everyone’s underwear is suddenly in bunches. Rough hands grab me and pull me from the car.

  My arms cling to my chest. Sweat pours from me, my hair drenched. As the pain ripples through me like thousands of sharp needles, I feel what I can only describe as the fires of Hell lick my back. My Mark.

  The same hard hands—belonging to Mike, I finally see—yank my leather jacket off, tossing it on the pavement. Josefina clings to Mom, biting her nails, worriedly watching me. Not a single car passes by. It’s like the world is already dead. People are hiding, waiting out the storm. Too bad it’s only going to get worse.

  I’m rolled onto my stomach, very much in the fetal position, and Mike says, “Warlock, can you do anything?”

  David kneels next to me. I don’t need to watch him to know he shakes his head. “We can’t interfere with Marks. And the name’s David, by the way. Just let her be, it’ll simmer down eventually.”

  “Simmer down?” Mike, incredulous as ever, grabs David’s shirt collar. “She’s practically on fire.”

  My face flat on the pavement, I squeeze my eyes shut. Never did my Mark hurt this badly. I could honestly say this is the worst pain I have ever been in in my entire life, including the shooting. No jokes, no sarcasm. My fingers scrape the blacktop and I bite my lip.

  The tears that form now aren’t for Dad; they’re for me. My life, my pain, my soul.

  What did I ever do to deserve this? To deserve any of this? I was conceived. I was a fetus in the womb, tabula rasa. A blank slate. I had so much potential—I could’ve been so many great, different things. My parents traded it away for, what, wealth? All of my potential, thrown out of the window. Everything I could have been, everything I could have done—taken from me, lost before I knew the difference between right and wrong.

  Of course, I couldn’t blame them completely. They weren’t even twenty when they had me. Still children, really. Kids having kids of their own. What kind of joke is that? A bad one, obviously. One I know the punchline to by heart.

  And Dad…I could tell he never was happy with how things turned out. Mom might’ve regretted it, but she lived her lavish life with a smile. Dad was never the type. A bit sullener, the twinkle in his eyes a tad more apologetic. When he grew up, he realized what a mistake it was, selling my soul.

  He’d never have the chance to regret it again.

  I push away the memories of him, do my best to ignore the fact that I watched my father die, along with the searing pain on my arms, struggling to stand. As I clumsily get to my feet, I see that I am, indeed, smoking. Or, rather, my Mark is smoking.

  Either way, not good.

  “I’m fine,” I say, lying, swaying as I struggle to get to my feet. I nearly fall down immediately; I’m stopped by Mike’s strong arms. He lifts me to my feet, my support. “Really,” I slur in pain, “completely fine.” My feet practically drag as Mike moves us toward the car.

  David bends to retrieve my jacket, flapping it in the air to make sure the smoke didn’t make a fire. Mike whispers, “We shouldn’t stay out here in the open. I can’t believe I’m saying this—” He shoots a glare at David. “—but we should get back to your store, Warlock.”

  I’m placed in my seat, still cringing. Thankfully, it’s beginning to die down. Both David and Mike get in; surprisingly, it’s my mother and Josefina who are last. Josefina practically sits on her lap, eyes wide as saucers, clutching her Barbie doll for dear life.

  “Your dad…” My mom trails off after I give her a teary-eyed expression.

  After that, she’s, for the most part, quiet. As David drives, she stares out of the window, seemingly oblivious to me, my pain, and that Dad is dead. She purses her lips, their bright red color a mockery of what we witnessed. Her whole demeanor is unchanged, her clothes clean. Not a hair out of place.

  My sadness, previously swallowed by pain, is now dwarfed by anger. How can she sit there as if nothing happened? As if this isn’t the end of the world? If she is freaking out, she’s doing a fantastic job at keeping it internal. But, knowing my mother, knowing Eve, that isn’t it.

  She accepts it. Accepts Dad’s death, my Mark—she accepts it all.

  How? I can’t say. Maybe she’s a robot.

  Let’s just say it’s a long car ride to David’s shop.

  Deb abruptly stands as we enter the shop’s backdoor. Xena, perched on the table where Deb has her drawings and pencils and pens, flicks her tail, thinking I’m going to give her love like I always do when I come home. Only, this isn’t home and I’m not in the mood for Xena’s cuddles and pets, regardless of how cute she is.

  “How’d it go?” she asks quietly after David closes and locks the door.

  “Badly,” I tell her, moving from Mike to David and then to the chair beside her. My legs are a bit wobbly, even after all this time. That was one bad episode. “How’s it look?” I say to anybody who would answer.

  Mike sets my jacket on the table, and David’s fingers gently tug at the neckline of my shirt. I can practically hear him frowning.

  When he doesn’t answer right away, I glance at the Mark on my wrists. Both arms have red in the black design now. “Is it all like this?” I offer up an arm.

  “Your arms, your shoulders, your neck,” David lists them off, “those parts of your Mark are active. Your back isn’t.”

  My mom, ever the type to refuse to face the situation, ushers Josefina out of the backroom, saying, “I’m going to give Josie a bath.” She gives a pointed look to David. “I assume you do have a bathtub?”

  “Just a bucket, actually,” David’s facetious remark falls flat, and he quickly realizes that no one is in the mood for jokes. He shakes off the awkwardness, adding, “Upstairs, second door on the right.”

  Mom says nothing as she leads the little girl away from us, and I let a harsh, terrible thought enter my brain—she can pretend that she has a normal daughter, one with a soul. The child she never got. After all, it’s her fault some random Demon owns my soul. Yes, my dad is partly to blame, too, but he’s dead, so now all I have to blame is my mom.

  David pulls up another chair, resting a hand on me, saying, “I’m sorry, Lexa.” He closes his eyes, tired. We all are.

  I shrug off his apologies. “Why didn’t you take him? Why didn’t you take him instead of me? I could’ve handled myself against that thing! He…he couldn’t. How c
ould you be so stupid?” I whisper the final word as if it’s the worst swearword ever.

  It hits him hard, and David swallows.

  Deb, the person who was least excited to visit my Warlock friend, jumps to his defense, even though she wasn’t even there. “Don’t blame David. He did the best he could.”

  I turn on her, angry. “Like you would know. I should’ve stopped Evalina from going upstairs. I should’ve forced my dad to go first. I should have been last!” I bang my head on the table, fingers curling into fists. Tears bite at my eyes, but I push them away, not wanting to cry in front of everyone. I know I’m going to have nightmares of Dad rotting before my very eyes, if I sleep at all.

  “Famine,” Deb says, as if we need a hint.

  “I’d call him Pestilence,” Mike says.

  It’s a long while—and a lot of internalized hatred and self-loathing—until I remember what my dad’s final words to me were. I slowly lift my head from the table, glancing at each person in the room. Deb sits beside David, watching him rest, somewhere in the middle of a concerned girlfriend and strange, creepy bystander. David has his head back, his eyes closed, hands folded on his chest. Portalling is easy for a Warlock, but bringing non-supernaturals through and not losing them on the way is tough. He didn’t waver in the face of the Horseman. I couldn’t be mad at him for doing what he did.

  I look at Mike last. The middle-aged man stands off to the side, by himself, leaning a shoulder against the wall. His sleeves are down, hiding the Mark on his arm, and his fingers toy with his badge. In all probability it’s a badge he’ll never use again. He has bags beneath his eyes. It feels like ages since I saw myself in a mirror, and I know I have dark circles just like he does.

  I could blame Mike for what happened, and he knows it. He shouldn’t have shot the dagger-wielding man…not a headshot, anyway. A shot to incapacitate, sure. I’m fairly certain all we had to do to stop the Horseman from rising is not let the tattoo guy kill himself after murdering an innocent. That seems to be the common denominator.

  But if that’s the case, why didn’t the gunman raise the first Horseman, Conquest, when I killed him with his assault weapon? Did I stop it, or is my theory entirely wrong? Maybe the so-called Master was a fickle thing. Maybe only certain sacrifices counted. Maybe he liked daggers instead of bullets.

  Either way…I need answers. I’m not a fan of shows that keep you guessing until the very end.

  I killed a man, I slowly recall, bringing myself out of my thoughts.

  A psycho cultist, but a man nonetheless. I didn’t have time to think about it. I zoned in and out too much at the hospital, and then I focused on avoiding the spotlight and returning to class. And then all this stuff happened. I’m a killer. If I had a soul, it’d be as good as forfeit.

  I guess it’s a good thing I don’t have one, then.

  “My dad’s last words to me,” I say, instantly grabbing everyone’s attention, “were that I’m the key.”

  Deb nibbles on the end of a mechanical pencil while David’s back straightens. “You’re the key, to what?” he repeats, blinking. “Surely he didn’t mean…”

  “The key to opening up the Seven Seals of Hell,” Mike finishes for him, turning to put his back against the wall, and to get a better view of us at the table. His teeth grind. “How about you stop opening them, then?”

  “Well, I’m not doing it on purpose,” I say, agitated.

  “No,” David says, shaking his head. His pointed ears peek out of his brown hair. “I don’t think it’s that simple. You’re not activating them by yourself…but maybe your presence does something. Maybe you’re like the binding agent.”

  “If that was all it was, the gunman would’ve risen the first Horseman,” I tell them. Both men in the room get an oh-yeah face. “Clearly, there’s something we’re missing.” I speak to Deb, “Any idea what that is?” When she says nothing, I add, “When I ran into you, you recognized me. How?”

  Deb remains quiet, flipping to one of the first pages of her sketchbook. She shows me a pencil drawing of a very nude me, standing in what looks to be a grassy field to my back, and a black portal to my front. Covering my most private bits is a snake.

  I put the picture down. My expression must have told David something, for he asks, “What is it?” He reaches for the picture, stunned into silence. All I can say is, thank goodness there’s a slimy, slithering snake covering my privates. I think I’d die of shame and embarrassment if David ever saw that, even if it is just a picture.

  Mike leans over him, studying the drawing, and I suddenly feel mortified. My butt is visible, as is my Mark on my back half, which Deb drew flawlessly. It’s as if I’m sitting here, naked. I might as well be, the way everybody’s staring at that picture. “You recognize this?” Mike questions.

  “I don’t…” My contesting of the picture trails off when I recall the dream. Swallowing, I say, “I might’ve had a dream that looked a bit like that.” I snatch the sketchbook, flipping through it in a hurry. More of the Horsemen, ones we failed to stop; the one of my parents’ house…and one more of me.

  I sit, once again completely nude, on a cross. The same snake is coiled around my entire body, its head buried in my neck, biting me. My head is thrown back, a look of pure ecstasy and bliss on my face. This is wrong. So wrong. Blasphemy, sacrilege, something like that.

  Before I can hide this particular picture—it’s one I don’t want anybody to see—David takes it. Since certain parts of me are showing, I quickly take it back, flipping the notebook closed as my friend asks me, “Tell me you haven’t dreamt of that.”

  Deb’s face says she already knows what I’m going to say.

  “Not that…position,” I saw slowly, moving my fingers alongside the edge of the sketchbook. “But in my dream, the snake did bite me.”

  “And you liked it,” Deb whispers quietly. As I cover my face, she adds, “It’s okay, Lexa. Of course you did. It’s natural. He has your soul. Even if you didn’t want to feel pleasure, he could force you to.”

  Both Mike and David stare at her with mouths agape, but I, being me, have to ask for more clarification: “A snake owns my soul?”

  Her normally light, sweet demeanor falls from a Care Bear level to a hug-filled Full House level. “He’s not a snake. He’s the Devil.” The way she says it, as if she knew all along—which, I realize, she just might have—startles me.

  I abruptly stand, blink twice, and head for the back door. “I need…air.”

  David’s as shocked as I am, while Mike looks a tad green, like he’s going to be sick. I couldn’t blame him. I felt like throwing up, too. Again. For the second time today, because not only did I watch my father die, I also learned who owns me. The Devil. Go figure. Could this day get any worse?

  David goes to follow me, but I stop him. “Please don’t follow me. Let me go. I won’t be long.” Since he knows me, knows that I’ll put up a fight, he lets me go.

  What did I say about this day getting worse?

  How stupid of me. This day can always get worse.

  And it will.

  I walk down the street that I spent a lot of my childhood driving down. Familiar stores are closed, even though it’s only late afternoon. Some windows are boarded up. Seems a little early to pack it in and call it a day to me. The apocalypse just started. This is the beginning of the end. These people are too dramatic to board up their shops already.

  Plus, after the end of the world, how likely is it that they’ll be able to return to the same livelihood? Or even survive in the first place?

  I walk in the center of the road, hands in my pockets. It’s like the world already died. It’s like humans are already gone. Newspapers, crumpled and torn, blow like tumbleweeds along the sidewalks. As I meander, walking around the same block over and over, my mind races.

  I think of Dad. Of how I accidentally impaled my arm when I was six, with a sharp kitchen knife. I remember crying my eyes out. I was young, the pain at the time was earth-shat
tering. The metal of the knife scraped my arm to the bone. Mom was outside in the pool; the gardener doing landscaping; the maids (in the pre-Evalina years) were upstairs cleaning. Dad was in the living room, sipping on coffee and reading the paper.

  “Ouchie,” I said through my tears, standing before him, lifting up my arm.

  Dad nearly fell out of his recliner, spilling coffee on the expensive area rug. He threw the paper aside and set the mug down, falling to his knees. I can imagine now the worry that went through his head; it was the first time I’d seriously (and accidentally) injured myself. The knife went straight through, poking out of the underside of my arm on my Mark.

  He adjusted his glasses, which he wore only when he read, staring at me incredulously. “Lexie, Kiddo, how’d you…” Even he couldn’t find the words to say. “…do this?” His hands floated around my arm and the knife, like he didn’t know what to do.

  “Get it out,” I said, not wanting to tell Dad how I was playing with the knife set, pretending I was a pirate. He’d only yell. I sniffed. “Please.”

  His eyes calculated things. “We should take you to the hospital—” His sentence stopped the moment I started waving my arm around, knife and all, like it was nothing worse than a bad splinter. “Okay, okay, stop waving it like that.” He took my hand and led me into the kitchen, where the knives sat on the floor, a telltale sign of my bad behavior. He hoisted me up, onto the counter, reached for a towel beside the sink, and told me, “Hold still, Kiddo. It’ll only hurt a second.” As he said it, even he didn’t believe it.

  And then he pulled the knife out.

  I yelped for a second, wiped the tears from my eyes as Dad set the knife down and quickly wrapped the towel around my arm, tight like a tourniquet. He kept his gaze averted, away from the Mark that sat on my skin. “Okay,” he said, helping me down, “let me get your mother, and we—”