Tattoo (Aug 11 2011)

She stands, in the dark, waiting, soon they would come for her.  They draw  her out by one hand, she steps in to the circle, lit only by precarious candle light, her hair a mass of dreads the color of a late summer sunset piled on her head and her skin glowing golden in the flames embrace, her back to the assembled watchers and she begins to dance.  Tall and lithe, she begins to undulate, the movements of her hips bringing to life the image tattooed on her lower back. Peering close you can’t seem to focus on it, can’t make out quite what exactly it’s supposed to be.  A sea creature or perhaps something more sinister and as she dances the room darkens and the image seems to almost be alive.  Outside, in pulsing time to the sway of her hips the ocean begins to surge and dark, formless things begin to rise from its depths.  A lone fisherman peers from his boat and sees what later he swears can’t have been real, towers and turrets rising from beneath and things so oddly shaped that he can’t later remember what he saw and when forced screams in terror in his sleep for weeks.  The sky above pulsates to the rhythm of the sea, a primal beat from the dawn of time itself and is rent asunder, stars vanishing from view while more shapeless things drop to the earth and begin to prowl the streets.  A strange fog envelops the town below and muffled screams break the silence of the night.  The drum pounds out like a bestial heart and the waters ripple faster, something larger, so vast the mind can’t encompass it surges forward and all but the throbbing beat go silent in anticipation, fear so deep and thick that it can be tasted on the lips of lovers, sleeping unaware in the dark.  Her dance spirals faster, her hips gyrating faster and faster, arms and eyes and teeth flashing in the semi-dark then finally, collapsing in a heap on the floor, glancing up, panting and covered in a sheen of moisture.  The night trembles, waters heave and the images and forms half seen pause as if taking a breath, perhaps waiting for some yet unheard signal from the room above.  Then they take her hand and lead her away, back to her corner. The stars reappear and the seas calm, another night, another time, another place and the girl with the Cthulhu tattoo.