THE BIRTMARK

Emptiness. Whiteness. Snow white oblivion.

Gradually a tiny dot appears in the distant horizon.

As the dot approaches and gets closer and closer, it expands, taking shape and form.

Soon the slight figure of a young girl takes form.

The blank canvass that surrounds the girl begins to come into focus. Simple lines and shapes sharpen into rough outlines…soon these rough outlines take the shape of the street, the pavement, trees, lamp-posts, buildings, vehicles, people and a dog or two.

The girl is Arabella, a twelve year old mixed race girl.

She is in school uniform because she is on her way home from school.

She is thoroughly engrossed in playing a game on her mobile phone.

Her thumbs pepper the phone’s screen like two hungry hens pecking away at a grain strewn surface.

The time on her phone reads 3:30:03 PM, the precise moment she steps off the pavement to cross the road. Due to the fact that all her attention is focused on her phone’s screen, she is unaware of the speeding car that hurtles towards her.

There is a screeching of tyres as the driver steps on his brakes.

In the background, an onlooker shrieks in alarm.

It is however too late… Arabella is sent flying in the air; together with her phone, the contents of her rucksack…and a shoe.

Suddenly Arabella finds herself in what can only be described as a spacecraft with three extraordinary beings.

Two of these creatures, a pale yellow skinned humanoid with massive feathered wings and a horned huge red skinned individual, are at the controls of the vessel.

The third, a child, is in some sort of play area situated about two metres behind the other two.

The child is obviously the offspring of the two at the controls. She has inherited her mother’s wings although her feathered wings are red and black compared to her mother’s snow white feathers. Also instead of her mother’s flowing white locks, she has jet black hair. She has her father’s red complexion and small protrusions at each side of her head, hint at the beginnings of her own horns.

The two creatures at the controls of the ship are busy navigating a path through the panoramic scene in front of them; it is indeed a spectacular view of stars, galaxies, nebulae and the blackness of deep space.

The childling is oblivious to the spectacular scene just a few metres away, perhaps it is because she has witnessed it on numerous occasions or perhaps it is because she is more impressed with the scene she has just created.

Surrounding the child are dolls, pencils, a paint palette, a series of paintings and drawings and a small structure that resembles a toy lift.

The child puts in the finishing touches to her latest work of art…the scene depicted is in fact an astounding detailed painting of the car striking Arabella. In fact the other pictures that surround the winged child are the scenes of Arabella heading towards her demise.

Satisfied with her latest work of art, she puts down her paint brush and picks up the nearest doll.

Remarkably all the dolls resemble humans of varying age and races.

The doll she has just picked up is clearly an ‘Arabella doll’.

As she picks up the doll, a smudge of dark paint from her own finger stains the back of the hand of the Arabella doll.

Using the doll, the child imitates the flight of a bird…eerily mirroring the flight of Arabella’s body in the painting.

On impulse the child puts down the doll and turns towards the ‘toy lift’.

The double doors of the toy structure resemble the doors of a lift one would expect to find in the lobby of a luxurious hotel in the 1920s. Adding to the retro-chic decor of this mysterious apparatus is the display panel above the doors. However instead of floor levels, the panel displays numbers that seem to represent periods of Time. At present the dial is pointing to the year 2019. Also, at the side of the doors is a panel that consists of knobs, buttons and some sort of ancient hieroglyphics that resemble alien lettering.

The child turns one of the knobs and then presses a button. The face of the display panel immediately changes and instead of years being displayed we get the months of the year. The dial settles on the month of July.

The child adjusts another knob and presses a button, the display panel then reveals the day of the month; it reads the 2nd. The child creature then adjusts yet another knob and presses a button; this time the display panel reveals the time of day - it reads 3:30:03 PM. The dial settles on this time but unlike a conventional clock or watch it does not move.

The strange girl then presses another button on the panel next to the double doors, causing the doors to slide open.

The child then picks up the Arabella doll and places it upright in the strange apparatus.

There appears to be some sort of counter-weight mechanism operating within the strange toy because almost immediately the doors begin to slide shut.

The doors slide shut.

The alien child presses yet another button on the side panel and the dial on the display panel begins to move backwards. It moves from 3:30:03 to 3:30:02 to 3:30:01 to 3:30:00 to 3:29:59.

Suddenly Arabella is back on Earth walking home from school.

She is still preoccupied with the game on her phone.

The time on her phone reads 3:30:03 PM. This time however, the tiny paint fleck that smeared the Arabella doll mysteriously and spontaneously appears as a dark birthmark on the back of her right hand, between her thumb and forefinger. This shocks her and she immediately stops in her tracks just when she is about to cross the road. This time, the car zooms past her, narrowly missing her. She is unaware of this near miss because she is too busy staring at the blemish on her hand.

She soon gets over her shock.

Unfazed, she merely shrugs; not even curious as to how a birthmark has suddenly materialized on the back of her hand. She crosses the road and then resumes her game, her head down, once again oblivious to her surroundings as she continues her journey home.

Her slight figure gradually losses shape and form, reverting to the insignificant dot first witnessed at her introduction.

The street, the pavement, the trees, the lamp-posts, the buildings, the vehicles and the people are soon regressed to simple outlines and shapes as they gradually slip out of focus. Eventually these rough lines and shapes fade away into nothingness.

The dot slowly disappears into the distant horizon, getting smaller and smaller, until it also evaporates into nothingness.

Once again…although in reverse…there is the experience of…

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