Tick to my Tock

Chapter One

Chapter One - Delilah's POV

In a world where number tattoos are as normal as an arm or leg, lives four young adults along with the billions of other human beings on this planet called Earth. The number tattoos change, constantly. No one knows what each number represents. There are two digits, a colon, and then two more digits. Kind of like a clock.

All their lives, each human waits for the clock to strike 00:00. Why? Because that is when they meet their soul mate. The person they are destined to be with, forever. There is no hiding from your soul mate. If you choose not to be with them, you're a reject. Simple as that.

Rejects are thrown into prison, spit on, stomped on, or used as items. They are no longer humans. No one wants them. No one needs them. That's just how life is.

Maybe you already know who your soul mate is. Maybe you've known them all your life, and maybe you haven't. It doesn't matter. Once your digits, and theirs go 00:00, you will meet. There will be a ding vibrating from your skin. You will hear theirs, they will hear yours, and everyone around you would know that you've met.

That's not the end of the digits though. After you've met, after 00:00 strikes, the timer resets. This time, when it hits 00:00, you are to have sex with your destined one. Once you are conceived with a child, the clock disappears, and out comes a majestic tattoo to symbolize your love. Whether it be true, or fake.

You can't hide if you are a reject. Even if you reject them and the clock resets to the Sex Timer. This is how the world is. This is how you must live.

You meet, and then conceive. If you don't, even if no one notices that you have been rejected or are the rejectee, they will find out. After all, there is nothing more dangerous than walking around with 00:00 branded on your skin.

You have to be careful. You have to hide. If caught with quadruple zeros, only lord know what will happen to you.

So let me tell you the story of Delilah, Melody, Hunter, and Adam. Trust me, it is one to be written in books. Lets see how they defy the rules. How everything, starting with a ding, started to turn into a lie.

****

"Mom! I'm leaving! Be back in an hour," Delilah called out to her mother. With hair tied into a tight and controlled ponytail on top of her head and her sleeves rolled up slightly to show off the timer on her wrist, she walked out of the house and into the sweet spring air.

Her striking blue eyes stared at the blooming flowers and leaves on trees. With a destination in mind, Delilah swung into her dad's Chevy truck and revved the engine. Delilah threw her bag containing all her school notebooks into the other seat, letting it ride shotgun. She inhaled the familiar scent of dirt and gas before slamming her door shut and pulling out of the driveway.

Delilah drove with one hand on the wheel, the other fumbled on her right to find a suitable radio station. The sound of a lady, or man, screeching extremely loud caused her to flinch back before her hand switched the station.

Her mind began to wander to her class schedule. She had decided to major in interior design. At a young age, she had always been interested in the way a living room was designed differently from a bedroom, and how a bathroom couldn't be modeled into a kitchen. Her parents had always thought that she was foolish. How were they to have known that Delilah would continue questioning why marble would look before than wooden floors?

To say that they were surprised when Delilah continued taking visual arts all throughout middle and high school was an overstatement. She could still remember the way her father raised an expectant eyebrow, and how her mother let out a long sigh as she announced that she had been accepted into a college for interior design.