Souls of Fire (2 page)

As different as my thinking was from theirs, so were my looks. I had fair skin, was rather tall, and had a slim build. I was not too skinny, though, and therefore, didn’t lack feminine curves. Although I didn’t work out and was not really the athletic type, my height and the fact that I had long legs seemed to work in my favor.

According to my parents, my hair and eyes had been the biggest surprise to them upon my birth. Apparently I had glimpsed this world with thick curly hair the shade of gleaming red flames and the brightest emerald eyes imaginable. Both my mother and father had been at a loss to uncover, which one of their family members had ever had such fiercely red hair or exactly that shade of emerald-green eyes; or more accurately: which family member had even remotely red hair or green eyes.

As the months after my birth went by without a change to either my hair or my eyes, they had allegedly just accepted this little ‘abnormality’ in their families’ bloodline and hadn’t thought about it from here on after.

My hair was now so long that the thick red curls fell slightly past my waist. I didn’t have any of the freckles which usually accompany fair skin and red hair.

The only marking on my white skin was a birthmark on the left side of my chest, placed on the rise of my breast, above my heart. It was light brown in color with an almost reddish hue and was as big around as a quarter.

I’d often stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror in my room trying to distinguish some kind of shape that would render it interesting, but had never been able to see anything in particular. It was just a formless birthmark which happened to be located at exactly the right spot on my body to be a constant burden to me.

I’d never been able to wear anything even remotely sexy for fear of having everybody laugh at the ugly birthmark on my chest. I’d always tried to hide it from my fellow students, wearing only T-shirts or high-necked sweaters.

Tomorrow would be different, though. Tomorrow I was going to start my first semester at college. I had been accepted to Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It had been quite a shock to find out they had actually accepted me! Though I’d applied as one of the top students of my year, I had never really envisioned being so lucky.

Tomorrow a new chapter in my life would start, and I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t hide anymore. Ugly as I would always think my strange birthmark to be, I would no longer let it rule my life. I would not let it continue to inhibit me. Of course, I wouldn’t dress in anything tacky from now on, but I would wear low-cut clothing that showed at least a little bit of cleavage. Even a little bit of cleavage was enough, though, to have my birthmark in plain view.

The next morning I stood in front of my mirror and looked at my reflection through droopy eyes. I hadn’t slept well. All night long, I’d tossed and turned, and just couldn’t seem to settle down enough to drift off to sleep.

I was terribly nervous about going to college. I didn’t know if any of my former fellow students from my home town of Woodstock, Vermont, were going to Brown University, seeing as it was an elite college. Even if they were, it made little difference, as I didn’t have any friends among them.

Actually, I didn’t have any friends. I’d always seemed too strange to the other kids for them to want to get to know me. I never really got along with any boys my age, and girls my age had other interests.

Unlike them, I didn’t constantly obsess about boys, and although I was very pretty, I didn’t give my appearance any particular thought.

Of course, I did try to look nice for school, but I didn’t make as big of a fuss as other girls did. I managed to look good without trying, which made the other girls who tried too hard angry, and made popular boys ask me out ― which, of course, made them even angrier.

I did my homework most of the time and studied hard when it was required, so I did very well in school. But other than being a means to an end, enabling me to go to college one day, my studies meant little to me and didn’t fulfill me.

I lived in my own little world. A world of fantasies and myth, of heroes, fairy tales and horror stories, monsters and demons, fairies and angels. A world made up of every story I had ever read, of every moment I had ever dared step into the pages of an unknown world full of every unimaginable beauty and horror.

A world made up of images so heartbreakingly beautiful and real to me that I couldn’t believe having only pictured them in my imagination.

More than anything, I longed to lose myself in the books I read, to leave everyday life behind and be part of something important, something meaningful. My own life in comparison seemed strange and forlorn to me. This normal life, without any of the glorious images I pictured in my mind while reading, didn’t hold much pleasure for me.

I craved the unexpected, the impossible, the unimaginable. In short: I was lost in my own little world of stories in which no one really existed but me, so that I had nobody to share it all with.

Ultimately, that might also have been the reason why I had never felt the least bit attracted to the opposite sex ― boys just hadn’t felt real to me.

This will just have to do
, I sighed internally, looking at the outfit I had selected for that day.  There really wasn’t anything wrong with my looks, but I felt so nervous and insecure at the thought of all the strangers I would meet, students as well as professors, that I wanted to look nothing short of amazing on my first day at college. Too bad, I would have to settle for looking pretty.

I was wearing an airy white ruffled cotton blouse cut out in a square, showing part of my white delicate shoulders and the skin above my breasts along with the birthmark I no longer wanted to hide. The blouse reached down to a little past my hips. Its long flowing sleeves hugged my wrists and then widened, letting the laced cuffs spread out to the middle of my long pale fingers.

My thick fiery curls sprung up around me in an untamed manner and spiraled downward to come to rest against the hem of my favorite pair of low-cut stonewashed blue jeans, which I wore on top of a pair of candy-apple red high heels.

As I was blessed with a nice rosy complexion
and very long dark eyelashes despite my red hair, I didn’t need to put on any makeup.

My full lips had a nice rosy color as well, but I liked them a little redder, so I grabbed the dove-grey bag I had already slung around my shoulder and stuck my hand inside, shuffling around books, pens, used and unused tissues and packs of chewing gum until my groping fingers finally found my favorite lipstick.

I puckered my lips in front of the mirror and applied a thin layer of crimson to them.
Placing the lipstick back in my bag, I was turning away from the mirror, when I caught a glimpse of my birthmark out of the corner of my eye. I whirled back around to look at it more closely and gasped.

It can’t be!
I thought, my heart beating loudly in my ears. A sound like rushing water was drowning out every other sound but that of my pulse.

When was the last time I had looked at it? My mind was racing, throwing images upon images of the past days at me, bleeding together into one confusing swirl of color and motion. Panic pulled me under, clamped down painfully on my chest, and made it impossible for me to breathe.

Calm down ― Oh God! ― Breathe! Breathe!
I silently screamed at myself, otherwise unmoving, trying to get a grip on myself.

It’s just my imagination! Nothing else! I’m in the real world, remember? Right?

I blinked a couple of times, desperately trying to get my blurry vision back into focus. I took a deep controlled breath and let my eyes move once more in the direction of my left upper chest, utterly convinced of having hallucinated.

A shiver ran down my spine.

Impossible!
, my mind screamed over and over again, the word seemingly echoing around my thoughts as if bouncing off imaginary walls; the word as clear and distinguishable as if I had spoken it aloud.

Or had I actually screamed out loud, I wondered, listening into the silence for panicked sounds coming from my parents’ bedroom, which would have indicated that my screams had been heard.

Nothing. No sounds at all.

Of course, my dad was already at work as it was already later in the morning. My mother, though normally also at work by now, was sick in bed this morning with a mild case of the flu that had started up last night, and would have heard me if I had screamed out loud.

Gasping for air, I rushed to my bedroom window, clawing at the window latch with fumbling fingers, my hands shaking violently. After several moments, I finally managed to open the window. I flung my head and upper body through the window frame and greedily sucked in the cool crisp morning air.

It was September, and the usual chill that set in this time of year was intensified by the aftermath of a stormy night. The air had a fresh cleansing feel to it that soothed the burning pain in my lungs and immediately started to clear my thoughts.

Sitting on my window seat, cool air caressing my face, I tried to reason with the small part of me that actually believed in the paranormal, or in magic.

Or in whatever inexplicable experiences are called
, I thought wryly.

The image I had seen had already irrevocably burned itself into my consciousness. It wasn’t the image itself that had made me panic. The image was harmless.

A beautiful rose.

As innocent an image as ever was; and as common as any rose tattooed to anyone’s body.

Tattooed,
I thought.
Tattooed being the operative word!
I was definitely not tattooed. Never had been and never had wanted to be. Well, maybe I had thought about it once or twice…

So unless I had somehow managed to get really drunk at some party I didn’t even remember going to, had woken up tattooed the next morning like many before me, and had then successfully managed to repress every second of it, I definitely had a problem! There just wasn’t a reasonable explanation for a shapeless birthmark suddenly turning into a rose.

I thought back hard. Two nights ago, I had been standing in front of the bathroom mirror after stepping out of the shower. After clearing a little round space on the mirror with the aid of my hair-dryer like I usually did in order to have a clear view of myself, I had shot a glance at my birthmark.

I only remembered so well, because at the time I’d thought that eighteen years of hiding were enough and that I ought to be more grown up about it.

That had been on the evening leading up to my birthday, and it had looked like it always had: shapeless! I had gone to bed early that night, before eleven o’clock ― my actual birthday ― and hadn’t really looked at my birthmark since.

Now the shapeless mark had changed. Seemingly out of the blue, colored lines had sprung up to form outlines of petals. They danced fluidly around the once drab birthmark, forming a beautifully contoured rose in various shades: a darker red outlined the petals and filled in the areas that were supposed to be shaded. The petals themselves were of a lighter reddish-pink. Cream-colored hues depicted the sections where the light softened their color.

The petals remained tightly shut around the bud. There was no stem, nor leaves or thorns, just the rose.

A bubble of hysterical laughter threatened to work its way up my throat.

Changed … into a beautiful rose the moment I turned eighteen! Right … isn’t that what every girl wants: to blossom?

The wave of hysteria worked its way through my throat and came out in a choked laugh that turned to horrible coughing.

Admit it: you’ve finally lost your marbles!
I thought.
Yep, one of the first signs of losing one’s marbles: talking to yourself!!!

The laughter that had finally clawed its way out of my throat filled the bedroom. Hysterical giggles bounced off the walls and out through the open window. The sound of my laughter finally made me snap out of the madness that had held me in its grip.

I needed to calm down. Reasonable explanation or not, I would have to stay calm and deal with whatever it was that needed to be dealt with. I would feel better if I actually knew what that was, though.

How was I supposed to cope with … this, I wondered. If I really wasn’t going insane, then the altered birthmark must mean something. How on earth, was I supposed to find out what it meant?

Aren’t there people who deal with supernatural stuff? But for something like this, who are you going to call? Okay, yeah, Ghostbusters! Or Sam and Dean?

A thought suddenly occurred to me.
I recalled something I had stumbled upon earlier, but hadn’t looked at thoroughly. I jumped up from the window seat and ran to pick my bag off the floor by the mirror. Not even having noticed, I’d dropped it there during the shock off seeing my new ‘tattoo’.

I opened the latch on my bag and dug my hand in looking for something I’d only cursorily glanced at before. Pulling out the brochure of my college, I plumped myself down on the wooden floor ― legs folded under ― and swiftly opened it up to the first page, running my forefinger slowly down the index.