The Onyx Tattoo

Terror

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After he woke up from his restless sleep, one that made him even more tired than before, Polen could barely summon the strength to sit up, the covers fluttering away from his body as he did so. Absently his hands rose to his face and fingered the bags beneath his eyes, and he knew it was nothing a little make-up could fix, letting his fingers skim over the rest of his skin. His cheeks were as smooth as marble, as was the rest of his face - but then he bumped against the tiny dots on his forehead and he scowled.

"Pimples," he muttered disgustedly, swinging his scrawny legs out of bed and placing his feet flat on the grimy floor of his room, coated in a fine layer of graphite and paper from his constant scribblings and puzzles. "Of all things I suffer from, it's pimples."

He continued to mumble complaints to himself as he combed his fingers thoguh his wild bedhair, slipping on a smooth, freshly-ironed shirt and dress jacket bought a week before for the occasion. They were both a neutral white, stiff at the shoulders and silky smooth, and it felt odd against his lean body. He hated them nigh instantaneously - it was like he was being confined in the cloth - but he would be able to bear it for one day. The dress pants he wrestled his legs into were straight and slightly less forbidding than the jacket, but only just, and the color, or lack thereof, burned his eyes as he took his tie, wrapping it easily around his neck under the collar of his white shirt. He expertly did it up so it rested neatly and flawlessly on his chest, and he patted it absently as he investigated the pile of clothes in the corner for white socks.

By the time he'd squirmed his small feet into the shiny white shoes, he was feeling slightly claustrophobic. "I'm not even claustrophobic," he growled, stomping around his small room to get used to the feel of the footwear. They had slight heels, as most pumps did, but they were thankfully mostly flat. Still, they weren't comfortable, and he already itched to be free of them.

Polen finally decided to meander over to the main room, stepping as lightly as he could and shifting and twitching in his tight clothing. But just as he was about to exit his room, his hand on the knob of his door, he quickly shot a glance out his window. The sun had barely risen; since it was the beginning of the warmer season, he figured it was about 0700 hours. He eased the door open quietly and winced when it creaked as it closed, but as it turned out it didn't really matter - for when he walked to the kitchen, he was surprised to find Telcee already there, armed with a comb and a shallow bowl of water.

"I'm going to tame your hair today," Telcee told him in all seriousness. Her word choice caused Polen to chuckle, and he smiled at her as he slid into one of the rickety chairs. His sister took over once he had made himself comfortable, and she slowly began combing his wavy brown hair into some sort of order. Some fifteen minutes later, during which he was lost in his thoughts and she did not speak as she worked, she dragged him to the mirror in her room, and he had to admit she had done a good job; most of the strands was neatly combed back, giving him an intelligent look, but now that the hair was gone the red dots on his forehead were revealed.

"Don't worry," Telcee said with a wicked grin, noting where his gaze wandered to on the grimy mirror. "Flauta will get that under control."

He was already eighteen, and he still got pimples; here Polen thought his hormones were under control. But when he mentioned this to Telcee, she just laughed and told him, "You're stressed, isn't that answer enough?" He supposed it was, and he wondered vaguely when Telcee had become so motherly and knowledgeable.

Flauta flew in with impeccable timing, just as he and Telcee returned to the main room. "Make-up was cheap on the mercato nero today," she told them, carefully using the black market's street term. It was really some sort of European language for black market, but the language was a dead one so it wasn't readily identified. Flauta has been named from that same language, though; Polen had been young when he had heard his mother name his sister Flauta, but he recalled that she had said it was the name of her favorite instrument.