Chapter 3: Symbol 242

It's everywhere. On the walls of abandoned buildings. On trees. Even on bodies of a selective group. Even, on me.
Dark blood had oozed from the walls of a circle, in caving the parameters of its square. With silence, it stayed still in one single color, red. Red for the love. Red for the death. Red for the identity.
Beaming on the stoic red, the sun rays dove into the square without thought, without mixture. It screamed for contentment in multiple splatters of the color yellow. Yellow embodies their curiosity to find the answers.
Sparing areas, nature swallowed the dark blood and scattered sunlight; making it hard for the supplementary colors to breath. In the night they vacate, leaving it all over the cities and nature.
What's left is a symbol.
A symbol of rebellion.
A symbol of my first tattoo.

Looking for survivors hasn’t been this hard in months; my narrowing eyes can only see such a distance. Squinting my eyes further than others’ perception, I glimpse the vines and leaves moving from an unidentified object. There, right there, draped in black it scrambles for distance as if it were wounded. Enemy parallel with my gun, I place my color-drained finger over the trigger. I get ready to pull when suddenly I feel an intense, yet passionate pain. “Don’t wonder. He’ll eventually die alone in the jungle,” his comforting, raspy voice lingers on my ears and neck.
His tattered, worn hands grip my waist. The pressure is just enough to bruise, but my thoughts are instead lost in his seaborne eyes. In a single rotation, my hips are kissing his, our mouths inches apart, our breath in unison, the warmth from his body encaves into my soul. My hand becomes stained like wine on a white rug when I move it to his chest. My glacier eyes widen looking at the blood that seep out of his shirt and onto my hand. Clumps start to gather on my black, wiry braided hair imbuing it with his crimson fluid, making my hair appear darker. Slowly, his hands slither on the outside of my body until they reach the destination of my rosey cheeks. Jawline to cheekbone, his hands are in control, sending a feeling throughout my body that I’ve never experienced. Yellow and green butterflies swarm around vines in the distance and it seems as if the world has stopped for us. It was the only moment of life I’ve seen roaming around, peacefully helpless.. My senses were getting stronger and the symbols give me hope. He looks down at my hand, studying my first print that appeared winters ago of five squares and their colors of green, red and yellow.  He then pulls our eyes together, and I know something was to come, but this time I can’t identify it.
Our mouths are an inch away and just before his lips touch mine, he whispers, “Don’t worry. I’m fine.” I blink in reassurance.
One of my hands lay on his wound and the other moves to his side. Applying pressure, he winces, squeezing my cheeks and kissing me harder.
Awaken back to reality by rain, he kisses my face and wraps me around with his warmth of unconditional love and admiration. The clouds from above fill the air and my aching body. A tear forms in the corner of my eyes. The glacier slowly starts to melt. Tears, one by one, seep into the open pores of my porcelain face; I can’t stop thinking of him in my epiphany of love. Our fingers intertwine beautifully with the contrast of the moon and stars of my dreams; leaving no space.
As I breath in deeply, all of the stars start to fall toward the pit of nothing and the white, creamy moon dims when I hear a cry for help. It’s haunting and it pierces my brain.
Shuttering, I break away from him in high alert, but he stares at me blankly. Crying, I beg. “Did you hear that? Please tell me you heard that?”
He rushes over and hugs me while saying, “Remii. It was you, you screamed.”  Flummoxed, I fall to the ground knowing that there may be a symbol somewhere. I pilfer through my clothing in search of bare skin that hasn’t been marked. My eyes and hands sweep over my body, starting at my chest, then to my arms where I stop my search. I feel it: a burning sensation on my thigh where my muscle begins to vibrate. I get out my Tranche Poche knife and slice the fabric off.  I look down on my ripped, Seeking Pants to see another, painful symbol. This time the symbol isn’t a geometric shape or number or name, but a drawing of a young, forest-eyed boy huddled in a corner crying. This time the symbol sends emotion and curiosity to my brain, wanting me, desiring me, to search its location and the child that is suffering.
Symbol number: 242
Symbol of love: 1