Locket Skin

Atlan appeared outside the fuzzy portal facing Bion. He lifted his torn shirt up high enough to reveal the tattoo that he knew would allow free entry. Bion could barely make out the distinctive marking buried beneath the deep lacerations across his chest. He nodded for Atlan to enter while stepping aside to clear the opening.

On the other side of the 10-foot depth of the stone passageway, Atlan found a cool mist he remembered from his youth. He rubbed his chest as he bent down to touch the ground with his free hand; then brought the hand up to cover the other as he bent his head as if in prayer. He peered through the mist toward the hilltop he intended to climb where he would find the others with the important talisman.

He felt a huge reverberated voice permeate the sky making out only one word, “home.” The voice was familiar to Atlan, but he couldn’t place it from the indistinguishable ghostly reflections. His journey had taken him to his final resting place.

A dirt-cracked hand reached down to shake him. “Wake the fuck up, dreamer. It’s your turn in the hole.”

Alan bolted upright to see the same drab gray-green landscape with nothing around him but ash and debris. He muttered beneath his breath as he slowly stood up stretching parts of himself. He felt a sharp poke in his side.

“Get up quick, gruel. I’ve got 5 more holes to tend to today due to the same asswipe morphing in that he’s sick again,“ he mocked in a namby-pamby voice. “What the fuck are you muttering?” *Poke*

“Sttaaaahhhhhpppp!” Alan shouted as he pulled all of his beef behind one punch and threw it towards his antagonist with every bit of energy he had left. The agent fell hard to the ground as Alan stomped on him repeatedly yelling, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

There was no one alive around them.

Alan reached down to pick up the electric prod and centered it between the eyes of the agent. “Die, mutant bitch. My name is Atlan.”

Alan quickly composed himself after his kill to look around at the other deads nearby. He tore away the clothing at the front of each of them to search for the sign. On two, he found the tattoo he was seeking. On the others, he found tattooed words written across their chests and backs, down their legs and arms. It was in the language he knew and could decipher most of the messages though some of the skin was torn from beatings.

Long before Alan was alive, the earth’s forests were stories told in family circles to keep the memory alive of the living conifer and dicotyledon beings that had once inhabited the earth with humans. What had been destroyed to make paper and other products for humans to abuse were replaced with ink on skin. The work of tattoo artists was in high demand during the “POD Years.” The Period of Decline spanned 46-years during which time the left-behinds became scavengers like the common roach, but in human form, and the MCs (money-class) were able to jettison off to space for short bits of time during the long wars. The long wars didn’t last. The armed evangelicals who were hell-bent to bring about their destiny stories of Armageddon added microdoses of nuclear fission materials to their bullets.

And so it went, mini nuclear outbreaks everywhere until there was nothing left except a few resilient humans and bugs. LOTS of bugs. In fact, bugs became the predominant protein of the humans remaining who had not succumbed to becoming mutants. The mutants were a cross between workers of human origin and those who had been created with algorithms and AI. We heard the change in the air as the mutants discovered our musical instruments and attempted a connection to our music-making devices. Whenever we heard this tune beaming from their speakerphones, we knew they were near.

Alan gathered everything he could find on the bodies of those who bore the talisman, and he tried his best to commit the important bits left behind on the flesh of others to memory as he sauntered towards the large dome. He had no idea what he would find in the dome. He had been watching it for months as he entered one of the many holes surrounding it to work deep in the mines beneath it. What was he doing in those mines? While Alan toiled beneath the earth’s crust, he conjured up stories of himself and others as superbeings who would one day lead the left-behinds back to the place they called “home.”

Perhaps today was the day. It could just be that his one bit of strength left to fight back might bring him to the dome door to discover what he and the others had hoped to find. They wanted some piece of the former earth to be protected and kept from the horrors of the nuclear POD years. They dreamed the dome contained a biosphere of life unchanged and ready to inhabit with full humans. These were the stories tattooed on the flesh--the tales of how those outside the dome came close and met their adversaries. They passed on knowledge to avoid the same pitfalls to the others via TATTOOs on FLESH. There was no paper to leave notes behind.

Only a few bore the full tattoo of the heart-shaped locket on their right breast, to the left of the one viewing it. Only one had the actual locket...Seiko, the one who tattooed. She was a legend among those who were left.

Atlan had to find her. He walked up to the dome. He approached the fuzzy portal facing Bion. He lifted his torn shirt up high enough to reveal the tattoo that he knew would allow free entry. Bion could barely make out the distinctive marking buried beneath the deep lacerations across his chest. He nodded for Atlan to enter while stepping aside to clear the opening.

On the other side of the 10-foot depth of the stone passageway, Atlan found a cool mist he remembered from his youth. He rubbed his chest as he bent down to touch the ground with his free hand; then brought the hand up to cover the other as he bent his head as if in prayer. He peered through the mist toward the hilltop he intended to climb where he would find the others with the important talisman.

He felt a huge reverberated voice permeate the sky making out only one word, “home.” The voice was familiar to Atlan, but he couldn’t place it from the indistinguishable ghostly reflections. His journey had taken him to his final resting place.

A dirt-cracked hand reached down to shake him. “Wake the fuck up, dreamer. It’s your turn in the hole.”