The Marker Concept

Chapter 1

            I watched the lines form on the inside of my forearm. He was drawing it again, reinforcing it thicker into my skin. The black lines he had drawn on his own arm slowly formed their way under my skin, showing up faded and pale. For whatever reason this strange pairing of geometric shapes meant something to him.

I traced the lines with my finger while my professor droned on about ancient history. His lines were finally connecting forming into the familiar triangles. He had begun filling the triangles: two fully black, surrounded by four with thick black lines, and a diamond shape in the center. There was something different, though, in how he drew the symbol today. He was more precise; there was a sort of need for perfection to the lines he drew, like he had to make sure he got them right. His force of the pen was greater, creating thicker black lines on both of our skins.

I looked up from my forearm. "The ancient Greeks believed in the idea of soul mates," my professor stated in his nasally voice. "They used to have four arms, four legs, four eyes and ears, and two heads. Zeus, angry with them, split them right down the middle creating two halves to one being. The two halves then spent their life times searching for one another so they could be whole.

"Our Markers," he went on, "are similar to this concept in that we spend our lives searching for one another. Markers, though, are easier to find because we are to communicate through markings on our skin: a Mark."

I hummed in understanding and jotted something down in my notebook. I looked back towards the now completed symbol decorating my arm. Him and I had been able to Mark for three years now, since my senior year of high school. The first time I'd ever received his Mark I was doing my nightly routine of washing my face. When I had looked in the mirror a cartoon drawing of a penis had appeared on my forehead. I had screeched in horror, when I couldn't get it off with my washcloth, before running into my brother's room.

"How?" I exclaimed barging into his room.

My brother had looked up before practically peeing himself in laughter. "Looks like you got your first Mark, kid! Genius!"

I had come to school the next day with a multitude of Band-Aid's across my forehead in a bad attempt to cover the horribly drawn picture.

I learned quickly after that, that he was a forgetful person. Besides the penis that I'm assuming his friends drew, I often ended up having homework assignments and grocery items written along my hands and forearms. There were moments when it was obvious he had drawn something on purpose for me to see, like an occasional heart or a statement, but that was only when he remembered we were connected and that wasn't often.

When I first saw the Marking of the triangles on my forearm I had though it was just some weird design he needed to remember for an art class or something along those lines. It wasn't until it appeared repeatedly within the month that I realized he wasn't just using his body as his own personal planner.

Every Monday they would appear again, reinforced. Just as they had started to fade form my skin he would trace his strange symbol again until it was dark enough to last. It had been happening for so long now that I had become religious in waiting for him to redraw them. Every Monday I spent about ten minutes watching him trace his crooked lines and fill in the shapes created.

My new religion eventually transformed into a modern obsession. When I wasn't waiting for the weekly religious ceremony I was spending hour upon hours in the library, searching for the meaning behind his geometric shapes. I had double-checked, triple-checked, and decuple-checked every new piece of information thrown my way about his Mark. I came up with little, though, and the only conclusion I could make about it was that it meant everlasting life in a Native American Language.