Marked

Chapter 16

        Walking through that door felt like stepping into a void, knowing I had no one there to catch me yet still daring to go in because you're hoping that everything that's happened was a blunt lie. Hoping to wake up from a never-ending nightmare. I trailed behind Marcus; wary of every breath he took. Each echo of his steps was a whisper in my ear that said: this is real, this is real, this is real.

        The hallway we were walking through felt endless, it was as dark as black ink, I could barely see my hand in front of me and I also crashed into Marcus one to many times, making me blush intensely. That was one of the scarce reasons why I was partially thankful of the darkness.

        Marcus stopped and I bumped into him, again, but he didn't move or complain at all, then I heard the creak of a wooden door and as a tiny sliver of light escaped into the hallway I could se him taking a step forward into a big room.

                  I held my breath as I stepped in timidly, as if I were making sure the terrain was safe. And then I let all the air out because what I saw was nothing compared to what I expected.

        The first thing I saw was a huge screen, divided in many rectangles, each one showing a different room in the house, under that there was a monitor table with several twinkling lights. To its right there was a desk with two chairs facing two computers there were two abandoned coffee mugs in the middle. At the left side of the screen there was a corkboard nearly as large as the surveillance screen, on it there were many pictures and notes, some of them familiar others just completely alien.

        But what shocked me the most was the station on the other side of the room. There was a rectangular metal table, which was completely cold to the touch, next to it there was a smaller table, this one had wheels, with different utensils that I had only seen in a doctor documentary that my dad had once forced me to watch.

        The were monitors hanging from the roof and all around the table, there was a large cabinet attached to the wall, I could see several bottles and vials through its crystal clear doors. I walked closer and opened one of the door, which were smooth and cold to the touch, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

        It was a reserve, I had always wondered how my parents always had all medicine I needed at arms reach. This was the explanation. It was a collection of pills, tranquilizers and then there were vials with textures I was never sure existed and each one of them was branded in a different color, creating a morbid rainbow.

        I turned back to the operating table, somehow my brain assumed that was what it was and it really couldn't identify it as anything else. I ran my hand over the smooth, cold metal and them a collection of memories flashed in my brain like a slideshow.

        There was me, lying on the table, asleep as two faded figures took out samples of my blood and took notes; then there was a man and a women, young of age, analyzing the cabinet, tagging different vials; there was me again, five years old, my face as white as a sheet of paper and my lips chapped and dry, there was a lot of tension in that scene, I was lying in bed as my parents tried to hide the looks of distress on their faces, there were as many doctors as there were monitors around me, the place looked like a wire jungle, each one with a termination on my body.

        The last image was the one I knew I would never forget, it was that man, the only with the same gray eyes but he wasn't bald and he had a hint of color on his cheeks, he was lying on this same table while tubes were being introduced into his body, he had confusion in his eyes but his face was completely serene. Once again there was a man, brown hair and blue eyes calm and serene as they always had been, and a woman, with shoulder length straight blond hair and brown eyes that could see right through you; my heart stopped.