Free Amalfi Echo by John Zanetti

to her.
“ Amalfi ,” it said. Now she knew why she had chosen these
particular tattoos. They drew on her skin the marks that would
eventually signal she had completed her training as an Amalfi
warrior.
    -oOo-
    Tessa created a
pillow and hit Marion with it, going from Amalfi warrior to a kid
in an instant.
    “Are you a
teenager today?” Marion said.
    “Think about
it, dude,” Tessa said. She had chosen to wear a top which was cut
off at her shoulder blades so that Marion and Digby could see
clearly the tattoo on her shoulder. She walked backwards and
forwards in front of them, waggling her upper arm at them. She
inclined the tattooed part of her face towards them as she strutted
back and forth. They didn’t notice. Adults!
    When she had
had enough of the posturing, Marion said, “We could do this all
day. On the other hand, you could tell us what this is all
about.”
    Digby had
created a newspaper and rustled it for effect, peering over the
top, as though short-sighted.
    “Oh, you guys,”
Tessa said. “Give me a break.”
    Digby tossed
the newspaper aside, the pages separating and encircling Tessa.
“Okay, okay,” she said, punching her way out through the pages of
the newspaper. She created a chair and sat down beside Digby and
presented her left shoulder to him. “Touch the bottom left hand
corner where it’s black and raised up.”
    “Are you sure
that’s what you want? I don’t want to be accused of anything.”
    “Do it!” Tessa
said.
    Digby ran his
fingers over the embossed portion. “What am I supposed to be
getting out of this? Is this new?”
    “Nothing
happened?” Tessa asked. At Digby’s negative reply, Tessa went over
to Marion, who was sitting on a couch. “Maybe you’ll have better
luck.”
    Mystified,
Marion touched the embossing and immediately recoiled. “Amalfi!”
she said.
    “It spoke to
you,” Tessa said. Marion nodded. Tessa explained about the mark of
the Amalfi warrior, saying proudly, that now she really had begun
the journey.
    “The one on
your face will become the same too?” Marion said.
    “The one on my
shoulder will change with each kill, and the one on my face, marks
my progress towards the status of Amalfi warrior.”
    Marion
frowned.
    “I didn’t think
you would like it,” Tessa went on. “Please try to be happy for
me.”
    Marion ran a
finger along Tessa’s hairline, reflecting. “I can see that you are
much happier now than you were and I’m very glad about that. I have
to say that I would prefer that you’d won a basketball
championship.” Marion hugged her and said “Congratulations. You
have well and truly earned this and whatever I think about it,
doesn’t matter.”
    Digby put out
his hand. “Congratulations. As Marion says, you have worked
extremely hard for this and no one deserves it more than you.”
    Tessa shook
Digby’s hand solemnly. “Thanks folks,” she said and embarrassed
now, disappeared amongst a huge display of fireworks.
    -oOo-
    Marion
organised the websites thusly: on her site she placed her broadcast
and a selection of additional material about the bugs. She started
a blog and posted a continuing stream of thoughts, prompted by her
studies, on the responsibilities of leadership which she repeated
on Twitter and other social media. These were not dry academic
dissertations but pointed remarks about how and why the world’s
leaders were failing their people in not preparing for war against
the bugs. She began to attract a following of conspiracy theorists,
geeks, anxious people looking for more anxiety, survivalists,
Islamists and Christians who hated her and loved her but not
necessarily in that order, and a huge number of people who
mistakenly believed that they were at the Revenge of the Gorgons
website, which was now enjoying a revival. Communities began to
spring up around her website and the one thing they all had in
common was that the bugs were now referred to as ‘the Gorgons’ even
though the Gorgons were