The Tattooed Preface

When the Tattoo showed on my back it burned excruciatingly. The agonizing hurt forced me to close my eyes and clench my fists into balls, my nails entering into my skin. I could no longer feel my limbs hidden under the overwhelming pain. No tears ran down my face though. I’d been expecting this moment. Waiting for this moment.

         I ran from the room with the searing pain on the nape of my neck and left the scene I’d created there. I fled from the water and the screams filled with horror. No longer would I be of help to my family.

         The mirror before me reflected my back. I pulled down the shirt to find the Tattoo. It was a dark black branded deep into my flesh. The picture was that of an unusually realistic eye encased inside a raindrop. It was as if Leonardo De Vinci had painted his mark on my bare, naked back.

         I smiled at the thought, though there was nothing happy under the circumstances. I was now marked, easily identified by many, and mistaken by few. In the end, it didn’t matter where I hid or how fast I ran. The game of hide and seek wouldn’t last long, and I would be found.

         My life was inevitable. I’d come to accept the fact now. Torture. Death. That’s what lay ahead of me, but strangely I wasn’t scared. I knew there was no way around my Destiny. It’d already been written in the Book of Fate. After all, I was Tattooed.