Free Indelible Ink by Matt Betts Page B

the drawer of their dresser. “Fine. Come here.”
    “Huh?” Deena was afraid of what her sister was up to. The sudden interest felt like a trap.
    Harper grabbed Deena’s arm roughly and found the spot with her finger. “This is it, right?”
    Deena nodded.
    Harper popped the cap on a permanent black marker and drew a wide circle around the dark thing on Deena’s arm. “There.” She tossed the marker onto the top of the dresser. “Now we’ll see if it moves. Now we’ll know for sure and you can shut the fuck up about it. Sound good?” Harper went back to gathering clothes for the laundry.
    Deena stepped back. Her big sister rarely cussed. “Geez. Take it easy. Don’t let Mom hear you talk like that.”
    “Whatever.” Harper grabbed the laundry and walked out the door.
    Deena looked at the mark on her arm. The circle drawn there had the blemish nearly dead center in the middle. Her sister was ever the perfectionist. At first it seemed a little stupid, but she realized it might be the only way to convince Harper what was going on.
    She licked her finger and scrubbed at the black circle. “Crap, that looks really stupid.”
    In study hall the next day, Deena caught herself staring at it. There was nothing else of interest to do, really, other than homework. She gauged how close it was to the edge of the circle her sister had drawn. It certainly seemed to have moved closer to the edge, or maybe the round spot itself had just gotten bigger. With a little spit on her fingers, Deena rubbed at the marker, trying to get it off.
    At the front of the study hall, three students came in late and handed the monitor a note. One of the tardy students was Mike Fischer, the boy Harper had been dating for a few weeks. He was kind of a dick and Deena didn’t really care for him. He played soccer, told rude jokes and didn’t seem to care that his grades were in free fall. There were rumors that he was cheating on Harper, but no one could really prove it. Deena grumbled to herself about Mike being late yet again to study hall and went back to trying to remove the mark from her arm.
    She was surprised to see that the little dark point on her arm no longer seemed to be circular. As she’d been watching Mike, the dot had flattened itself out and appeared to be more of a curved line. In fact, from her vantage point, it almost looked like a frown. She nearly jumped up from her desk to run and show her sister. Deena wanted to do it immediately, before the blotch had time to change again. As soon as she stood, the study hall monitor gave Deena a dirty look. Deena had pressed her luck with the monitor before and there was no way the frowny face spot on Deena’s arm would be a viable excuse to get out of the room. Study hall was her last period of the day and she could easily catch her sister at home afterward.
    Deena sat back down and stared at the spot some more. It still showed as a frown. For the rest of the study hall, she looked at nothing but the curved black line on her arm. She wondered if she could change it even further. Deena had sworn it had moved around, but she’d never seen it as anything but round. Yet here it was: a curved line, a frown, like the circle had detached and moved to the new shape.
    After school she ran home to show her sister. By the time she got there, the line had once again become a circle.

16
    Stanley walked with the men to the empty suite two floors up from their own. It was originally owned by an insurance company that suddenly went out of business after the owner was killed in a tragic car accident. Stanley stopped being surprised by tragic accidents that occurred around his line of work. It was tough figuring out whose heart attacks were natural and whose were brought on by nefarious means. No death ever seemed perfectly innocent to him anymore. Natural deaths felt like a thing of the past.
    One of the men, Frank, pushed Harper to make her move faster. “Let’s get this over with.” He waved