The Waking

Chapter I

Chapter I

     The symbol that burned itself into my left forearm woke me in the middle of the night. At exactly 12:01, the second I turned sixteen. I wasn't paying attention to any of these details, since I was in unbearable agony. I rolled out of my nine-foot-tall loft-bed, my flesh bubbling, and crashed onto the floor with a "BANG" loud enough to shake the neighbor's house. I shot a quick glance at my arm. The skin was red, raw, and bleeding. I could faintly see the shape of the letter "c".

     The scream that escaped my lips was one that I had never heard before. It was the sound of sheer horror and pain.

     My father rushed into my room, wearing nothing but an open housecoat and his Bugs Bunny tighty-whiteys. His eyes were wide.

     "Za-za-za-Zach!" he cried, stuttering, "Holy crap, its happ-pp-ppening! Your mother was right! You're the One!"

     "Dad" I yelled, "Shut the hell up and tell me, what in the name of God-Almighty is going on! What the freaking hell is this?!" My face was beaded with sweat. I'm not normally very vulgar, but I was in excruciating pain.

     Then, as if this was an electrical current gone haywire, and someone pulled the plug, the pain stopped. Out of the blue, the fire inside of me was gone. My ears rang and my arm was numb, but aside from that, I was completely fine. As if the strange eruption on my skin had never happened.

     I stole a glance at my arm and gaped, stupefied, at the newly burnt capital "c" on the front of my left forearm.

     "'Hundredth of our kind-' "c" is the Roman numeral for one hundred." my father mumbled, to no one. He turned to me.

     "Zacharias Michael Dawson, we need to talk."

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     A few hours later, I was sitting at the kitchen table sipping from a steaming hot cup of coffee. My father took a breath.

     "You're not human." Whoa. Talk about bad birthday greeting.

     "What do you mean, 'not human'?" I shouted, "I'm perfectly human!"

     I didn't mean to yell, but finding out that I was possibly from outer space was kind of freaky.

     "Calm down Zach," my father sighed, "let me finish."

     "Your mother came to me," he began, "she told me the truth- The whole truth."

     He handed me a sealed envelope with my name scrawled neatly across the front. He also handed me the letter opener, got up with his coffee, and headed to his room.

     "Read it." he said, without looking back.

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     My dearest Zacharias:

     You are far too young to understand any of this now, so I will trust your father with this letter, in case something happens to me before your sixteenth birthday. You need to understand that I love you, no matter where I am.

     Long before you were born, I came to your father, asking for help. In exchange, he asked for my hand in marriage. I accepted, and six years later, I was pregnant with you.

     But of course, you must know all this already. It is time you learn the truth of your origins.

     You aren't human Zach. Your father knows it just as well as I do. Biologically speaking, you are part human. Half human, half... Dart.