Glitches

Chapter 4 - The Mark

It was a bright, warm summer day and Abby was out with her friends. It was almost summer vacation and the group of girls were all too ready for the break. They were visiting their favourite café with all their usual drinks, just as they did every second Sunday. They were making plans for the following day after school, talking about homework and studying for their upcoming finals, as they took a seat and waited for their drinks to be ready. After they had all been served, one of her friends suggested they go to the mall just down the street. As they started walking toward the mall with their drinks now in hand, the wind suddenly started blowing harshly in every direction. First it only whipped their hair from side to side, then it blew their drinks out of their hands, making them land splattered against a nearby wall. The girls started to panic so they ran to find shelter with no success. The wind had then gotten so strong that it started to lift them up off their feet and throw them around the street. Rain then started to pour as if on cue, and the streets quickly started to flood. The friends ran inside the closest unlocked, elevated building they could find, slamming the doors shut to avoid the storm. When Abby turned around, she was welcomed by the horrified faces of her friends looking back at her. She looked back at her friends with worry and asked what was wrong, afraid there was someone inside the building with them or the impact from being thrown around had injured one of them. "Y-your neck..." one said. "I-its... h-horrible!"

The girls started lifting Abby's hair and then screaming and backing away at what they saw printed on her skin, dropping the hair they held back into place  on her neck for the next to lift. She struggled out of the hold of the girls and caught a glimpse of the markings, apparently normally hidden by her hair, which she had surprisingly never noticed before in a nearby mirror. All of the horribly shaped birthmarks down the back of her had been exposed. These weren't like the birthmarks people would usually put on their children during the Perfection, ones shaped like hearts or flowers. Abby's were just random shapes, and when the wind blew at her dress through a small opened window, her friends could see the same marks all down her legs.

"She's a misprint!" one of her friends yelled, tugging at another's arm to show them.

"A Glitch!" another of her friends said, using the word she had learned of from her virtual pen mate earlier.

"A monster."

"Worse than that - an imperfection!"

"S-she can't be here! She has to leave! What do we do?!", one of the girls yelled, while tucking back up some of the hair that had escaped from her previously clean and neat ponytail, looking for any other girl in the group to take command of the situation.

"You're right! She can't be here, we need to get her away from us!" said the tallest girl in the group, taking command as the other girl's eyes had practically begged her to do.

At that, the girls approached Abby and grabbed her arms when they finally reached her. They then pinned her down and tied her up with some ropes they found in the building they now found themselves in. They made sure to tie Abby up well, so that she could not escape, avoiding touching her as much as possible since one of them pointed out that they didn't know what it was and that it may be contagious. Abby tried explaining what these marks were to her friends, but she honestly didn't fully understand them herself, and the girls just ended up ignoring her anyway, eventually silencing her by shoving some rope into her mouth. All that could now escape from her were choked sobs and muffled screams.

They hoisted Abby over their heads and started walking towards the door. One of the girls let go of her birthmark-covered leg to unlock the door and twist the handle. As the door opened, the girls put Abby down, making sure to not leave the shelter they had found while placing the glitched girl outside. Two of the girls decided they wouldn't mind getting wet so they stepped out from the doorway to drag Abby into the streets. Since the streets had flooded more since the girls had taken shelter in the small house, Abby had to raise her head to not choke on the water.

Once Abby was out on the street, the girls went back inside and locked the door again, but not before throwing a glare Abby's way and spitting out quick sneers like "Fucking Glitch" in her direction. After a few minutes of kicking and screaming for help in the growing flood, the wind whipping in her face, the water had started to rise above Abby's head. She was thrashing around trying to keep the water out of her nose and mouth, her body covered in bruises from the tight knots against her skin and the objects being blown her way by the violent wind. She took one last teary look up and noticed people at every window on the street, staring at her with more disgust.

The water completely covered her face and eventually the cold liquid started burning her lungs while she tried desperately to breathe. Everything faded to black as the screams from her friends and sharp stares from the people lining the windows of each house on the block, slowly faded away too.

Abby woke-up in her room kicking and screaming in her bed, almost ripping her pajamas off with panic. All down her body was drenched with sweat and she had to struggle to escape the blankets that had been wrapped around her while she flailed. Her mother was a very heavy sleeper, so luckily she wouldn't be woken-up and question why Abby was so afraid of her dream. Explaining her dream to her mother would only lead to more questions revealing her activities on THE SERVER from earlier that day and everything she had learned about the marks, which would have been quite problematic for Abby's future plans.

In a panic she ran over to her mirror and started inspecting her body for any marks like in the dream. She tore off her baggy shirt that came down to just above her knees, then her pyjama shorts. First she checked the back of her neck, grabbing at her hair frantically, just as the girls had done in her dream. Then she proceeded to check her legs for any marks that may have trailed down the back of her body, and when she was met with the absence of any abnormalities, she started checking her arms, her face and her torso.

Once again she didn't find any marks on any of her limbs, however when she pushed her dirty blonde hair back from behind her ear, she found a small birthmark. She jumped back in fear at the mark that certainly was not put there purposefully laying on her hairline. She had never really taken the time to fully examine herself, like most teenagers, since she knew that thanks to The Perfection she looked like most others her age, so when she moved her thick hair off her ear, she was thoroughly horrified.

She looked at the mark, ensuring it wasn't just a sunburn or some fluff from her pillow, and when she had ruled out all the other options she came to the conclusion that it was truly, undeniably, a birthmark. A glitch.