Omen

Matt had been living in the streets for some time now. When he was not occupied searching for food at the discarded items of convenience stores or buying himself a spot near the local bump’s fire bin with packets of cigarettes and whiskey bottles, he had snatched, he was mostly looking for answers. After the incident with Frank and the group of psychos that attacked them a few months back, the boy was left with no clue on where to go next, but only a secret he now had to bear without telling a soul, living or otherwise. Frank had been hurt but he managed to escape dragging the boy with him through the collapsing building. The amounts of dark energy that had been unleashed in the Hall of Transformation had brought the whole place down, along with the believers that were armed to the teeth that day, ready to spill blood and take lives.

It was only a few days later that Matt discovered that the pain on his neck was not just the result of the debris that had fallen on him during his escape, but from a mark that resided there, still fresh like someone carved it on him. On a broken mirror down a dark alley, the boy saw a triangular shape with something that looked like a sigil in the middle. Stretching his arm to touch it, the mark reacted sending waves of painful sensations to his body. Matt left it alone for the time being and tried hard to decide where he was going to head to next. Exhausted as he was, with the rain pouring hard on his coat, the boy crawled behind a pile of rubbish bags and fell asleep. He dreamt of clean clothes and delicious foods, of a woman, kind but fierce, that held a small string, spinning it until it shined bright and came to life, a small thing infused with light, then she gave it to him.

“This is for you,” she said. “As long as you protect it, you will be safe.”

Matt took the thin silky thread in his arms but it withered and died, reduced to pieces and slipping between his fingers that were bloody and decayed. Matt turned to the woman, but she was no longer there. Another one had taken her place, her beauty overwhelmingly forcing Matt’s heart to beat in rhythms he didn’t know existed, her perfume dazing him, weakening his resistances, hinting promises of the flesh a young boy such as him only now realized existed. The woman came closer, her lips opened seductively while the boy’s heart pounded like never before. Just before he was able to taste her lips, his mark burned in the way ice burns and made his whole body stretch with pain. Matt clenched his teeth to stop himself from screaming and he intuitively stepped back from the woman.

She looked surprised for a second, but then her face became dark and her brows narrowed while the boy gave her a beseeching look. As Matt was thinking about the lost opportunity to experience what he thought to be a bridge to adulthood, the woman made a faint movement, like drawing something in the space in front of her, and a small crack appeared out of thin air. Matt witnessed her hands disappearing in it and then pulling something that looked way too big and heavy for her from the inside. As the blade of a huge sword was revealed from the crack, Matt felt that he shat himself. The woman’s dazzling beauty gave way to a disturbing, fierce cry that made Matt’s ears hurt as it punctured through his eardrum. The woman swung the gigantic sword with ease and style, aiming for the boy’s head. Matt would have been dead in an instance if his mark hadn’t burned so deep that made him open his eyes back to the real world, gasping for air.

The boy took a good, deep breath and stood up, soaking wet and freezing, but still in a better shape than in his dream, which felt suspiciously concrete and real. The mark was hurting him even now, but less than before. Matt remembered Frank explaining to him that he would experience unforeseen oddities as a result of the process that had preceded, but the boy had imagined they would be closer to a headache than to beautiful, murderous females making him look like an idiot. After gathering his thoughts, Matt pulled his coat’s hood on his head and pulled its cords to tighten it. He was about to head his way back to the main road when he put his hands in his pockets and paused. Something was in there, the boy curiously pulled it out and his jaw dropped. The shining thread he had dreamt about laid in his hand, glowing faintly and then vanishing into thin air. The boy had no clue what to make of it, one thing his mind was certain of though; that was no dream.

A few months after Matt encountered the pretty psycho of a lady in his not-a-dream, he started noticing that wherever he was going, a certain feeling enveloped him. In times where he was paying attention to something or he was just lost in his thoughts, or even taking a piss in a corner, it felt like someone was watching him. First, he didn’t pay any attention to it but when his mark started hurting every time he had this feeling, Matt started observing his surroundings. It was tricky at first since he was not sure what to search for but then he saw it. On certain occasions, among the various people he encountered every day, there was always someone that seemingly minded their own business. Every time Matt was seeing them through the person then vanished like they knew they have been discovered. At first, the boy laughed and thought that he was just imagining things, or maybe after spending so much time alone out there he was starting to become paranoid. Later on, he discarded the thought and just started playing with the idea of how many people he would make “disappear” on that day.

That was until one night, things got a really weird turn.

Matt had arrived in Springfield, Illinois, and was walking down West Mason street, eyeing a bar and grill lounge, thinking about how he would convince the manager to spare him a bite. In his travels, Matt had already worked as a scullion and supply carrier, mostly for business owners that took a pity and gave him a couple of days of allowance for his help. On every occasion, Matt had to convince them he was older than he looked but refused to get into any details on why he had no papers to identify himself. What the boy hated the most was bumping on rednecks or white supremacists; him being black and all, dressed in filthy clothes that he changed every few weeks and usually looking like a beggar, made him a direct target for them. While his usual tactics included running away from trouble, there were a couple of times that he was cornered and forced to face them, leaving the boy scarred and bruised in his lake of blood and tears.

On such an occasion Matt learned that his body was different than the people around him. He could take a blow, spill blood, lose a tooth but then, a few hours or days later -depending on the damage inflicted- everything would be back in place like he was never hurt. The whole process involved his mark freezing like in his -not-a-dream and making him suffer, but still, it worked. After a few encounters, the boy realized that the more patience he showed to the mark’s pain, the quicker his body recovered. Being bullied around was familiar to him by now, but Matt has an inherent sense of humor and enormous thirst for living life to its fullest, paid little attention to the scam that bothered him.

His arrival to Springfield was marked with the old feeling of being watched, but Matt was more worried about his stomach complaining, while he was breathing the delicious smell of grilled beef and fried potatoes coming from the lounge a few feet away. Searching his pockets, he found a few stained dollar bills and some coins, maybe enough to buy himself a burger and even a soda if the owner had it in him to give him a small discount. Lost in the thought of delicious barbecue sauce and caramelized onions, he was not fast enough to react to his mark’s spiking feeling until it was too late.

In the middle of the road, while people were walking around at the pavement across the street and others were getting in the bar to have their lunch, a tall man wearing a dark, brown cloak, with most of his face covered from a matching hood and holding a knife in reverse grip was coming fast toward him. Matt was just slightly able to raise his arm and protect his face as the man was slashing him in a combination of calculated moves. The boy made a few balanced steps back with a surprised face. Turning to the side of the bar and grill Matt tried to call someone for help. When he opened his mouth though, instead of speaking out, he choked, as if something was stuck in his throat. The man laughed at him and brought his hand in his mouth, blowing something like dust to Matt’s side. The boy, confused and frightened turned back and run like hell.

Matt, struggling to maintain consciousness due to the blood dripping from his soaked arm, reached a dark alley. He quickly realized it was a dead-end, but looking behind him he saw the man closing in and realized he fucked up because there was no way he could escape without a fight now. The blade in the stranger’s hand glowed as it reflected the light from a distant street lamp. A panicked Matt tried again to scream for help, with the same results as before. Coughing his lungs out, he tried gulping down his saliva to ease the pain in his throat; whatever the dust he inhaled was, had voided his ability to speak, for the time being at least.

His adversary didn’t waste any time, as soon as he got close to the boy, he swiftly attacked. His moves, precise and tactical, reminded Matt of a movie he saw a while back in a drive-in theater. He had slipped under a truck after the movie started, and remained there till he heard the engine turned on when the ending titles appeared on the screen. The boy was daydreaming of Raizo, the ninja assassin whose story the movie told, for days; the character’s masterful abilities in the ancient, mystical techniques of the shadow warriors made the boy wonder of the many things he would never get to experience in life. If someone had walked over back then, telling him he would once face such an opponent, Matt would tell them they were crazy.

The enormous amount of pain his mark sent over his body brought Matt back to reality. All he could do was try and avoid the swings of his opponent’s weapon, but the boy felt there was more to it. Every time the mark burned, Matt could feel something in him trying to free itself, sort of like an internal mechanism crawling its way out. It was when the man came close to him and stretched forward to inflict the fatal blow that Matt realized what he had to do. Focusing on the knife’s trajectory, Matt stopped trying to control the pain from the mark. Right before its point pierced through the boy’s skin, Matt’s clothes were torn from the inside out. With no time for the strike to be averted, the knife punctured directly on the boy’s chest, its blade shattering to pieces and the cloaked man left holding a now useless handle. Stepping back from the boy, he saw the little one’s body dramatically shifting in what seemed like an exchange of energy fields.

A current, visibly palpable, radiated from within, forming a protective barrier that covered Matt’s body, then proceeding into hardening in a firm, flexible kind of exoskeleton. The man guessed the barrier started forming at the boy’s chest and then spread, blocking his attack, which on another occasion would have potentially injured the attacker as the impact was reversed towards the attacker. Curious but also careful on how he should handle the situation, the man calculated the number of strikes he would need to inflict on the boy to bend his defenses. Meanwhile, Matt, stricken with surprise, momentarily forgot about the man’s presence and started observing the thin layers of petrified electricity that seemed to blend with his skin, creating small, detailed patterns of dark blue and black, like the finest embroidery. What was curious about the whole process was that the boy didn’t feel any pain or discomfort, but more likely a feeling of satisfying freedom as the mark now seemed to soothe any previous discomfort. Opening his mouth, the boy realized he could now speak, though his voice sounded deeper and with a sense of static electricity following his every word.

“Did you see that, man? How cool was that? Oh, hey, I forgot. Who are you and why the hell are you attacking me?” the boy jumped from the feeling of experiencing the coolest thing ever, to the immediate danger he had underestimated for a moment. Realizing that, the boy raised his hands like a boxer would do. It didn’t matter if knew how to defend himself, or how much more experienced his adversary was. Matt had learnt that in this world, nobody cared if you lived or died. Your only chance is to fight till your last breath.

The man didn’t respond to Matt. Instead, he threw the knife’s handle, hitting him in the eye. Staggered, the boy instinctively covered his face, while his opponent jumped forward. Matt didn’t realize how it happened but the energy field that was now him reacted violently. As if it had its own mind, his arm energized, reaching on the man’s neck and slamming him with enormous force on the ground. With his face bashed, choking in his blood, the man struggled to escape Matt’s grip, to no avail. The boy’s limb, strong as an iron press, kept him pinned down.

The boy noticed that touching the man’s skin created some form of electric resonance between them. Somehow Matt was aware that if he concentrated enough, he would be able to manipulate it. Lost in his thoughts, and with unprecedented power running through his veins, Matt didn’t notice the object that ran towards him, building momentum and forcefully striking him from the side. Matt lost his grip on the man and rolled over until the pavement made of concrete stopped him. The boy had barely felt the impact which was the reason he was able to try and see what was the source of his acrobatic performance.

Still a bit dizzy, he concentrated on the man on the ground and the thing sitting on his chest. A creature with eyes red with rage and spite, licked the man’s face with a swollen tongue dripping a yellow substance that seemed to burn the man like corrosive acid, making him scream in pain. Matt noticed that despite his efforts, he was unable to escape the creature’s weight, which seemed to give the thing a wild sense of happiness.

From somewhere nearby, a whistle was heard; the creature raised its head and turned to its source, then ran on all fours towards it, dragging its rugged clothing on the asphalt, with its black, greasy hair flapping behind it. The cloaked man, still screaming, tried to use his sleeve to rub the acid from his face, only making the result worse, as pieces of it got stuck on the fabric and dislodged as he moved. Matt’s mind was sinking in his adversary’s torment when among the shady, twisted shapes that formed and changed at the very touch of distant light in the alley’s corner, an old, hunched woman appeared.

The creature, faintly whipping and looking at her pleadingly, skulked between her legs and dared touch the tip of her fingers, a gesture the woman rejected by pushing its hand away. The wooden cane she was holding on to, assisted her in moving slowly but steadily. She approached Matt and straightened her pointy glasses to take a better look at the boy. The moment her facial features became visible, the man on the ground seemed to recognize her. He called her by a name Matt had never heard before, the man’s voice unsteady and frightened. The woman ignored him and turned to the boy instead.

“Well, well. Aren’t you a spectacle for sore eyes? Up you go now, dear. No need to further your stay in this part of the city.” Her voice sounded surprisingly young for her apparent age, Matt thought. It abruptly seemed like a worm in an apple, but the other way round.

The influence she had on the strange, deformed being that seemed to adore her like a goddess, intrigued Matt, but he was pretty sure that this was not the time to ask the woman about it. As she approached the fallen man, the creature started growling, while he tried to crawl away from it. The woman stood above his head and gazed at him with a total lack of emotion or sympathy. Opening her mouth, the man gasped and gave her a pleading look.

“Don’t bother yourself. You were sent here with a purpose, isn’t that correct? You failed and now I’m giving you a new purpose, one that will serve as a warning for my dear sister.” The woman almost spat the last words to the injured man. The creature next to her foot stirred with anticipation, then the woman turned to Matt.

“Go, boy, I will not say it for the third time. I will come to you when the time is right.” The woman left no space for argument, her words were final and the boy felt that. Having no idea what he was up against, he decided it was better if he took his chance to escape. Whoever she was, Matt realized her intervention was exactly what he thought as none-existent in the world. Solidarity.

Matt nodded and turned towards the road, pacing away from the scene. He only looked back once when he heard the man screaming in anguish while the creature held him down and chewed pieces of his face; the man’s skull turned black and shattered as if it was made of clay, the pieces disappeared like dust in the air. Matt fastened his pace, as his armor turned back to electricity spikes that were absorbed by the mark on his neck. The boy noticed he didn’t feel hungry anymore.

Somewhere far away from where her servant met his fate, a blonde, skinny woman opened her eyes, revealing her purple, diamond-shaped pupils. She was just as Matt had dreamt her. The obsidian throne she was sitting in was decorated with human skulls. Her black armor shined as it bathed in the moonlight that slipped in from a small gap on the roof. She had felt the man's demise, as well as the boy's awakening. Next to her, a sword that exceeded the throne in size -and possibly weight-, was hovering; its hilt was made of fossiled fangs, and its black blade had bright, red runes carved on it. The woman frowned as she put her hand on the sword's hilt and lifted it like a feather. With a gentle move of her hand, the cloth of realism cracked and revealed a schism that allowed her to pass through. The crack closed by itself after her, covering the throne room in silence.