The Mark
Lucid Codex Entry 004
She hovered before she realized she was dreaming.
The room wasn’t hers.
Not exactly.
But it felt like it should’ve been. Like someone had taken her real bedroom and stretched it...bigger, quieter, with more doors than she remembered ever needing.
She lay on the bed. Blinking up at a ceiling that rippled like water in slow motion.
Then...the weight left her.
Not fast.
Not loud.
Just... gone.
Her body lifted, slowly, like air was thick enough to carry her. First a few inches. Then a foot. Then all the way to the ceiling fan, arms drifting like silk in current.
She didn’t move.
But something moved her.
Her body bent. Turned. Twisted slightly in the air as though testing joint angles. Her limbs were graceful. Detached. Like she was being piloted.
But her mind...
Her mind latched on.
She turned. Just a little. Floated left. Rotated in place like a satellite learning its orbit. She dropped an inch and caught herself mid-fall with nothing but thought.
Panic and power coiled inside her ribs like two animals circling.
She willed herself down.
And her body obeyed.
Feet hit the carpet.
No gasp. No scream. Just the cold realization that whatever that was...it wasn’t random. It had rules. And she needed someone else to see.
She moved down the hallway. Shadows stretched wide across the doorframes like they were trying to step out. One door was lit.
Inside: her friend’s sister. Awake. Scrolling. Face lit by phone-glow, detached and half-curious.
“I flew.”
The sister looked up. Blinked.
“I was up there,” she insisted, pointing toward the ceiling. “Like, near the fan.”
The girl stared. Eyebrow arched.
Nothing happened when she tried again. No floating. No pull. No shift in the air.
Just gravity. Heavy. Mocking.
So she lifted her shirt.
“This wasn’t there yesterday.”
High on her hip...left side.
A mark.
Not drawn. Not inked. Not burned.
Impressed. As if something gripped her between dimensions and pressed its identity into her skin.
It was a snake. Curled into itself like a sigil. Tongue forked and reaching, poised in silence.
Her friend’s sister leaned in. Touched it.
Warm.
Raised.
Real.
“What the hell…”
She grabbed a cheap blue eyeshadow palette and began tracing it. Trying to map it. To explain it. As if pigment could pull it into the realm of reality.
“We can’t draw,” she whispered.
But something had.
Something above the ceiling.
Something with intention.
A signature. A calling card. A brand.
The mark didn’t hurt.
But it hummed.
A low, rhythmic vibration beneath her skin...just strong enough to remind her:
It was still there.
It had always been there.
And it might not be finished.
-
Dream 5/13/24
I was in my room in a home that was different...much bigger, with multiple large bedrooms. I was lying on my bed, and I could feel myself levitating. Then I was a lot of feet off the ground, and I got scared.
But I could feel myself trying to control the gravity and where I was going. I was flying all over the room, then I was able to bring myself down.
I passed by a room that I think belonged to my friend, but she was asleep, so I went to her sister’s room because her light was on and she was up.
I tried telling her, and she was entertaining me, but I could tell she didn’t believe me. Of course, I couldn’t do it again.
But I had a mark on my butt that I showed her. She knew that wasn’t there before. It was an imprint, but permanent...like a tattoo without ink.
It was a snake, with its tongue out, split at the tip like a snake’s tongue. It was curled and stamped on my butt.
She was like, “Okay, this wasn’t there yesterday,” and she started coloring it with blue eyeshadow so they could get an imprint since we can’t draw.
