The Past Burns: Hidden Marks

'How can you tell where the fire started, if it all ignited at once? How can you know where the poison entered the body, if it pours out everywhere?'

A horrible poem, I throw the book down in anger. The thing doesn’t even make sense for fuck’s sake. It might as well just be a whole load of nonsense. I wouldn't be able to understand it even if it did make sense, my head has been elsewhere of late. I can't concentrate on a single thing, it's so frigging annoying.

I wish I could just do something and all this bullshit with my mum would go away. As I think about it all I see the book has flipped to a different page when I threw it on the floor. I sighing, I push myself off the bed, and slowly bend to pick it up. I turn it over in my hands, studying it, remembering all the hours I'd spent scribbling in it. I was quite sure that it hadn't changed page when I hurled it at the wall, but apparently it had.

This page was covered in ornate designs. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it, I was so sure that I had never drawn anything like that, never even attempted to draw anything so amazing. I could never imagine it, so delicate and frail. It startled me with it’s immensity, even though it’s only lines on a page. It was confusing, like some sort of labyrinth - but with tiny pictures. I stare at it for a little while and the lines blurred together. A curl here, a swoop of some long forgotten pen there. All joining together to form something beautiful. A single image, one entire symbol, made up of thousands of intricate smaller ones.

I blink a couple of times, a bit moved by it, feeling a tear roll down my cheek. I watch it slowly fall and land on one of the rough pages. Frowning, I stand back up from my - less than comfortable - stoop and carry the book back to the bed with me. Lying my stiff body back down onto the bed, lifting the book above my head, I try to find and clue of the maze, looking for the indentations on any of the pages. Despite searching for almost a quarter of an hour, I find nothing and give up, I put the book down on my lap.

‘What the hell...’ I murmur, squinting at the pages, I lean in closer to make sure I’m not seeing things. I run my hands over the pages and it’s still the same. Nothing. It doesn’t make any sense. If someone made the lines with a pen, then there must have left some sort of mark behind. But it’s clean. Even the lines are starting to disappear, curling in on themselves to become nothing.

-- written by George and Cat Lee