Persephone's Curse

Signal me the way

Thea

Shaking off the freak factor that felt like it had been following me the whole entirety of the history lecture - which was mainly coming from Aidan Kalias, new lecturer's help and honest creep, if we were to consider the fact that he was totally following me.

Well, or had been, a couple moments ago, for as I finally looked back just before spotting Larissa on a bench - right where she had messaged me she would be in her free period - he was no longer there. But I was fairly sure it had been his presence I could virtually feel following me down the stairs, out of the building and along the sidewalk.

I was still trying to make up my mind between confronting him about it or hoping I was just making it all up. It would be awkward after all if I was to walk up to him and be wrong about the staring and following. Which was always a possibility. I tended to be rather paranoid sometimes, trait I'd most likely gotten from my mother.

"Thea!" called Larissa as soon as she saw me near her, bright smile on her face. I had not expected her to be so friendly, especially because this morning had been the first and only time we talked, but she messaged me right at the end of the lecture and asked if we could hang.

"Hey." I answered rather awkwardly when I sat down beside her, sharply realising we had no subject to discuss.

It didn't matter, apparently, because Larissa was one hell of a talking machine.

"Sorry for messaging you this suddenly, my sociology proffesor cancelled the course at the last possible moment and I remembered you said you were going to be in the same building earlier this morning." She flashed another smile and went on, "And I also remembered you did not know what your new tattoo was supposed to mean, and there's this app that searches pictures you take on the internet." She shook her phone in one of her hands, "So I thought we could take a pic of your tattoo and see what google knows about it."

I honestly did not know why the idea hadn't crossed my mind earlier. It was literally the easiest thing to do ever.

"Okay, let's give it a try." I agreed and pulled my hair to the other side of my neck, baring the tattoo to her phone's camera. I heard a quick click sound as she snapped the picture.

She craned the screen in my direction so I could see it too and pressed some eye shaped button that pulled up a loading google sign. As the circle went round and round and round and round I couldn't help but be a little bit anxious. After all, this shit was still hurting, alas less frequently now, but I could still have gotten some skin desease from the needle it'd been made with or something like that. And it could still mean some dumb shit I had thought funny last night. I couldn't even begin to imagine how my very old fashioned mom would react to it, whatever it meant, actually.

When the screen loaded, there were a couple of pics that looked similar to what I had on my neck and Larissa pressed on the first one. An article about it being some pagan wicca rune or something like that popped up, not much information besides that, a few more pictures that kinda looked like my tattoo but had additional circles or lines. It did not look like something I'd willingly put on my skin.

"I don't think this is it," I said as I scrolled down through more pictures of pagan rituals and what looked like made up spells that would have so intrigued me a few years ago when I was obsessed with witches.

"Okay, we'll try another link, then."

She pressed on the next picture, which was virtually the same apart from the fact that the horizontal line that to me looked like the ballerina's skirt was missing. Without it, it looked more like a fork or a trident. Kinda...

Larissa read through the article in a flash, then raised her head to me, "This one says it's an alchemic symbol and some more stuff about wiccans and druids." She scrolled lower, "Oh wait, there's another pic that also has the line this one's missing."

I waited patiently for her to read through what the internet said that meant. "This mentions it's a symbol of Hades, like his personal mark or something like that." She snickered, "I'd still go with the ballerina, though."
Me too, I would have had no way of knowing all those meanings the sign could have...maybe drunk me had really wanted a poorly drawn ballerina on her neck..
One thing was sure, mom was going to kill me.

Right at that moment, the pain in my neck flashed again. I closed my eyes at its intensity - it was worse than even the first time - and all I could see was the red of the sunlight through my sealed eyelids. But that was wrong, because when I had closed my eyes, the sun was hidden behind heavy clouds. I would have passed it off as an illusion caused by pain, had I not also seen a bridge on the inside of my lids, leading to a metropola sized city, all drenched in red light.

There was something very wrong about that light that I could not pinpoint. It was like the twilight zone, or that one episode of PowerPuff Girls where the devil character had taken over and everything was red. Freaky as actual hell. And all the while, the pain in my neck wouldn't cease.
And then I opened my eyes, saw the world as I always had, and breathed heavily. Five times. This was not the time to panic. Event through I was subjected to horrendous pains that rivaled my period. Which may actually be reason for panic.

I needed to calm down. If I calmed down, the pain would go away, and so would my heart, which was threatening to burst out of my chest.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and Larissa's voice asking me if a was okay. Not for the first time today. A wonderful day, what can I say.

Slowly, as I breathed and looked straight ahead, the pain started to disappear.

Just in time for my phone to ring.

Couldn't I have one moment of peace?

Looking to Larissa, I took my phone out of my pocket and, with a hurried, "I'm fine now, thanks!" I got up to answer. I could not possibly sit while talking on the phone, no matter the circumstances.
Man, it was like my mom could sense I did something stupid.

In the back of my head, I knew Larissa looked worried and that I should look at her again to at least assure her I was not going to die. For some reason, I did not do it as I slid the green button on the screen.

"Mom?"

"Althea, dear, I want you to come home right now."

Mhm, what?

She sounded panicked, so I did not question her.

"Mom, are you okay?"

"I will be, when you get here, dear. Please, hurry!"

The urgency in her voice made me want to drop everything and run. Even though it made no sense. But I have always done what my mom said, so it did kinda make sense.

"Okay, mom, calm down, I'll get there as soon as possible."

"Good, hurry. Don't get delayed, no matter what. This is more important than you can imagine," she said, then abruptly ended the call.

Something about her last words kinda bothered me, though I could not quite put my finger on what it was.

I turned to Larissa, "I'm sorry, I have to go. My mom said it's urgent."

"Wait, are you gonna go all the way home?" she looked rather surprised.

I smiled, "It's not that far at all, half an hour's drive and I'll be there."

And then I left, no good bye, just leaving her there.

Looking back, that should have been a sign even to my humanly addled brain.

And also looking back, the fact that bumping right into Aidan on my way to the dorm's parking lot made me stop and actually accept his offer to go out for coffee should also have been a sign.
A good one, from the Fates maybe, saying that's where my life was supposed to be headed all along.