Heather's One-Chapter Bits

Birthmarks

Note: this one's a bit short, and as Jaz says, "Cool but confusing."

"They rejected me!" Jason exclaimed, bursting into the tiny apartment he shared with his father, sister, and grandmother. Today, only Gran was left in the hot, un-air-conditioned, two bedroom unit.

Gran blinked up at him, gently waving her brown paper fan in front of her face. "Why ever not?" she asked in her sandpaper voice. "I was under the impression you were a front runner for the part."

Jason sat down heavily on the rickety armchair across from Gran. "They added a shirtless beach scene," he growled. Violently, he yanked his shirt up, revealing a long red birthmark splayed across his abdomen. "This ruined it."

Gran nodded. "Alright."

Jason sighed and sank deeper int his chair. He'd practiced for days to get this part. It was supposed to be his big break, and now some idiot with flawless skin would be the newest action hero of America.

A siren wailed outside the filthy window. Gran tilted her head and listened. "That's another one."

"How do you always know?" Jason asked. "Every time there's a gruesome murder in this city, somehow you know before it even happens."

She chuckled. "Haven't you noticed yet? That mark you're so hung up about should be telling you."

His eyebrow shot up. "My... birthmark?"

"Oh yes," murmured Gran. "You only have one, but I have many. They ache whenever something so gruesome as death occurs."

Jason shook his head. Sometimes Gran was superstitious and made no sense. He'd learned to just let her talk.

"You see," she continued, her voice becoming clearer and sweeter, if only for a moment, "each one marks the place you were killed in another life."

Gran hobbled over to Jason and lifted his shirt. "Here." She ran a thin finger down the blotchy red mark.

He blinked at his grandmother, confused. This was one of the wilder stories she'd told. "How do you think I died, then?" he asked skeptically.

She smiled coyly and touched his forehead.

"Death to the pirates! All of them!" cried a voice from Jason's left.

Startled, he stumbled back a step. Before him lay not the interior of his dingy apartment, but the wooden floor of a ship, filled with clashing swords and gun smoke.

The man in front of him growled. "What's that, Rossi? Backing away from a fight?" He pulled a gleaming silver rapier from it's beautifully decorated sheath. The crest pinned on his chest shimmered in the dim light.

"Of course not," answered a deep, crackling voice that definitely was not Jason's, yet seemed to come from him. Of its own accord, his arm lifted a curved saber and struck the rapier from the fancy man's grasp. "Simply contemplating how quickly to kill you, Brown."

Brown backed away from Jason. His eyes darted over the floor, looking for his weapon, only to find it had slid beneath the feet of a fighting pirate. The floor heaved beneath him and he tripped, sprawling on the ground, but Jason kept his stance.

"This is the end. You've been a scourge to me since the first day I sailed these seas," Jason sneered at the English general. He stepped forward and raised his saber for a final blow.

It never fell.

A stinging pain flared in Jason's side, and he dropped the monstrous saber. Clutching his abdomen, he sank to the deck.

The last thing he saw was the blurry outline of Brown standing up with a thin knife in his hands, announcing, "The dread pirate Antonio Rossi is dead!"

Jason opened his eyes with a jolt. Gran no longer stood over him, but sat in her recliner. She cocked her head. "Well?"

"I-I was... He tried t-to... then the knife... and I d-died..."

Gran nodded knowingly. "Should have known it was a knife wound. Too thin to be a sword."

"B-but-"

She smiled and turned away from her grandson to look out the window.

Jason's mind whirled. That couldn't be real. Could it? Gran's stories were entertaining, but never true. That would be impossible. It was simple. He must have drifted off to sleep, the product of a stressful day and an overactive imagination. At least, he thought, he could put that imagination to good use.

He pulled a pen and a journal from the desk drawer. If he couldn't get someone else's part, he'd write his own. Smiling to himself, he set the pen on the paper and began to write.

The dread pirate Antonio Rossi, scourge of the Mediterranean, fell on his knees and begged for his life...

A sharp pain shot through Jason's abdomen. He keeled over and clutched his stomach, panting. His vision went dark.

In the background, he heard the faint wails of a police siren, and his grandmother saying,

"There's another one."