The Tattoo

Speculative Fiction by Joseph B. Cleary

Dirk Doran had walked by the tattoo parlor hundreds of times and his only thought had been that a tattoo was one of the few mistakes he hadn’t made. He almost got a jail tattoo when he was locked up, but then he decided to kill the time in less permanent ways. After he got out and saw that everyone, including the local prom queen, had one, he figured it wasn’t something he wanted to do.  

That’s why he was surprised when one day he walked into the parlor. Well, actually he wasn’t that surprised. He ducked in there because Betty McCree, a woman who had been harassing him for the death of her husband, was coming down the street. He did not need her yelling at him in public again.  What was her problem? He had been found innocent in a court of law. She should let it go. Okay, he got off on a technicality and it was obvious that he did it, but the law was the law and she was the one who was breaking it.

He was, however, surprised he stayed. None of the tattoos that covered the parlor’s walls appealed to him.  Still, he had a weird feeling that he was not going to leave without something on his arm.

He sat down in a chair and checked himself in the mirror. He took out his comb and slicked back his black hair, trying to figure out why he looked so much older than his twenty-six years.  A young girl, who was wearing cut-off jeans and had red hair and a black rose neck tattoo, came out of the back room and handed Dirk a book of tattoos. She gave Dirk a wink.  When Dirk turned away from her a tattoo artist was standing next to him. The guy was thin, pale, bald, and toothless.   Dirk got up to leave, but his legs felt weak. He sat back down.

The artist took the book away from Dirk and went to work. Surprisingly, Dirk did not feel a thing.  The only painful part was the guy’s foul breath. When it was done, the tattoo artist walked away, leaving Dirk staring at his arm, trying to figure out why he had gotten a blurry tattoo of a person looking at the framework of a house.

The red headed girl was sitting behind the cash register when Dirk got up to leave. She was writing something in a notebook. As she shut it Dirk thought he saw his name and address in it.

“Uh, what were you writing in that book?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but nothing. Do you want to take a look?”    

The girl opened the book. All the pages were blank. Dirk wanted to ask her how a book she was writing in could be blank, but he knew how that would sound.

“Are you going to pay now or later?”

“How much is it?”

“Free of charge.”

“No, it’s not. I’m going to pay you for it so I can come back and get it fixed if I find out you guys fucked it up.”

“You can’t get it fixed here. We don’t fix other people’s work.”

“What? I had it done here. How can it….”

Pip’s not an employee anymore. He stopped by to pick up his last check and decided to do you for old time’s sake.”

“Why didn’t someone tell me that before…”

“You looked like you were determined to get a tattoo, so we didn’t want to interfere. Cash or check?”

“Charge.”

“We don’t accept credit cards.”

“You should be paying me for having to put up with the guy’s stink breath.”

“I said you could have it for free, so there’s no problem. Have a good day Mr. Sir.”

Dirk left without paying. When he got home, he examined the tattoo. It looked a different. Dirk figured the tattoo had settled, if that was possible. Now the man was walking toward a small blue house.  What the hell was that?  If he had to get a tattoo, he could think of a lot of other ones he’d like. And why hadn’t he gotten it on his right arm, where he had a scar from where an old girlfriend cut him. He considered going to another parlor to change it, but he had a feeling that would just make things worse.

***

Pain shooting up his arm woke him up the next day. The tattoo felt as though it was moving around. But he knew that it wasn’t moving because it couldn’t be moving. It hurt so bad that Dirk checked to see if it was bleeding.  

The person in the tattoo looked familiar, although Dirk wasn’t sure why.  Dirk realized the house was actually a store.  It looked like it was part of his town’s retail district.

Dirk got out of bed and tried to eat breakfast. The pain intensified until he could not sit still. The air in his house was stifling. He went outside to get some fresh air and headed for town.

As Dirk walked around town, the pain worsened. He checked the tattoo to see if it was scabbing or bleeding. While there was nothing to suggest a wound, the tattoo had changed.  The figure now had dark hair and seemed to be getting closer to the store.

Since Dirk didn’t know much about tattoos, he thought this might be something new.  But how could they invent a tattoo that changed after you got it.    If the pain didn’t subside, he was going to have it removed.

The more Dirk walked, the more intense his suffering became, until it was unbearable.  He turned around and headed for home.  The pain eased up.   As he walked toward his house, he only felt a mild discomfort.  The tattoo must have started to heal.

Then the pain rushed back worse than ever. With every step the agony intensified. It got so bad that he had to stop.  Now what was he going to do?  He felt as though if he took one more step he would pass out.

He looked at the tattoo, expecting it to be inflamed. It wasn’t, but it had changed again.  The figure was now almost in front of the store.  A pronounced nose, high cheekbones, and piercing blue eyes had appeared on its face.  He wanted to rub it to see if it was made of some type of weird ink, but the pain prevented him from touching it.

Dirk realized that he had stopped in front of a store that looked exactly like the one in the tattoo.  A scream came from inside of it.  Since his parole officer would frown on him being near a crime scene, he turned to leave. He couldn’t. The only direction he could move without the pain escalating was toward the store. He even tried to stand still, but the pain increased.  He knew that he was walking toward trouble but that was the only way to ease the torment.

As he got closer to the store, the pain decreased.  When he heard a gut-wrenching scream, he stopped. Pain exploded inside of him.  He bent over. Then he forced himself to straighten up and head toward the store.  With every step he felt relief.  Then he figured out why.   He had been put there to help whoever was shrieking.   

He ran into the store. A bald-headed man was tied up and the store was ransacked. The man didn’t seem to be hurt, but from the way he was yelling you would have thought his arm had been cut off.  What was his problem, insurance would cover the loss.

When Dirk untied him and the guy ran for his insulin, Dirk understood.  After the man shot up, he told Dirk that he would have gone into shock if he was tied up much longer.

“Is there anything I can do for you? You saved my life.”

“Yeah, you can let me get out of here.”

“But I owe you. Not many people….”  

“Sorry Bro, it’s time for me to beat feet”

“Are you sure there’s … “

“Bye.”

Dirk expected the pain to come as soon as he hit the sidewalk.  It didn’t.  He was pleasantly surprised that he was able to walk wherever he wanted to walk.  He wouldn’t even know the tattoo was there if he didn’t look at it.

He decided to go back to the tattoo parlor and try to get something done about the situation.  Dirk couldn’t shake the feeling that it was useless, that he was stuck with the tattoo. Still, he had to do something before the pain came back.

When he got to the parlor, there was a blonde-haired girl, who had tattoos up and down her arm, giving a young, dark-haired girl, a tattoo.  A thin man with a long beard, who had almost as many tattoos as the woman, sat at the cash register doing paper work.

***

“I don’t do work like that and neither does anybody who works for me,” the thin man said. “No offense, but it looks kind of cheap to me.”

“It’s one of those special tattoos. “

“What, exactly, is a special tattoo?”

“You should know. This is….”

“Is that a fist going through a car’s window? “

Dirk looked.  The tattoo had changed.  This was beyond weird.

“Look, someone who works here put this on my arm.  Now I want to know who and where he is. You guys fucked it up and you guys are going to fix it.”

“I’ll tell you where he is; he’s not here, which is where you should be.  I was going to offer you a cover up at a discount, but I don’t like you. So goodbye.”

“But . . .”

“Get out. “

When the man produced a gun from behind the counter Dirk took his advice.  If he was anywhere near as strange as the man who gave him the tattoo he wasn’t bluffing.

Dirk decided he had to get some money together and have the tattoo removed.  He should have left the guy in the store tied up and robbed him.  The robbers left enough stuff to fund a laser operation.

It occurred to Dirk that he had read the signs from the tattoo wrong.   He wasn’t supposed to save the guy, he was supposed to rob him. That was why there was still stuff in the store when he got there. If whatever had guided him toward the guy wanted him to be saved, they would not have sent a crook like Dirk. That would be like sending a pyromaniac to put out a fire. The tattoo wasn’t a curse, it was a blessing.

Things were starting to make sense.  His prayers were finally being answered.  While he wasn’t a very successful criminal, he was an even worse honest citizen.  In fact, he hadn’t had a good day since he got out of jail.  Someone or something was trying to tell him what he should have already known, the straight life wasn’t for him. If he used the tattoo the right way, it would make him rich.

The next morning, he woke up in excruciating pain.  He got up, went over to the sink, and tried to run cold water over the tattoo. He yanked his arm away from the water as it only made his agony worse.  He looked at his arm, expecting to see it inflamed. It looked normal, but the picture had changed again.  The figure looked vaguely familiar and now was running towards a car.

Dirk knew what he was supposed to do.  He went to town and walked around, waiting for the pain to direct him. Before long the pain’s intensity increased. He turned and headed in the opposite direction, until the agony subsided.  Whenever the pain increased, he would change directions, searching for the least painful route.  The only direction that it didn’t hurt was towards a street corner.

Dirk knew what he was going to see when he turned the corner and sure enough there it was; a woman was being pulled out of her Mercedes by a burly young man.  To make sure he was in the right place, Dirk tried to walk away.  The pain was crippling.

Even though the car thief was a lot bigger than Dirk, stopping the robbery was easy. Dirk picked up a rock and slammed the thief in the back of his head. The thief went down.   

The fun part was watching the victim’s face go from gratitude to confusion to panic as Dirk jumped into her car and sped away. The good times ended when Dirk’s arm felt like it was going to explode.   The faster he drove, the more intense was his agony.

Dirk slammed the brakes on and swung the car around. He raced back to the woman.

“I’m so sorry. I panicked. I just wanted to get away from all that violence.” 

How could someone be a bigger loser, Dirk thought as he hurried away. He was disgusted with himself.  The car had been in his hands and he gave it back.  While it was true that if he didn’t the torment would have been unbearable, he had still should have figured out a way to make it work.

Dirk went home, smoked a joint, chugged some vodka, and passed out.  When he woke up there was a house engulfed in flames added to his tattoo. He tried to ignore it, but the ink felt like it was turning into acid.  Still, whether it was to save somebody or rob them, he was not going into a burning house.

But then he got an idea. If there was a fire everyone’s attention would be on it.  It was an invitation to a free shopping trip.  All he had to do was pick out a store near the fire and rob it.

Staying home was not an option anyway. The pain was already intensifying. Soon, it would be unbearable. He got out of bed and got dressed.

The torment drove him right to the fire.  When he got there, he didn’t hesitate.  He looked like a hero dashing into the burning house.

Dirk pulled a frightened kid from the fire and left her on the sidewalk. Then he forced his way through the crowd, ran down the street, and into a jewelry store.  He took out his gun and made the owner lie on the floor. He then proceeded to smash the glass counters and grab the jewelry.  When he had everything he could carry, he headed for the door. He was about to step out onto the street when excruciating pain attacked his entire body. He froze. The owner shot Dirk three times in the back.

As Dirk laid dying, Betty McCree stood over him, next to the pale bald tattoo artist.

“You idiot. Did you really think I was going to waste my time following you around? I wasn’t following you; I was herding you. The only thing I wish is that I could make your death longer and more painful.”

Right before he died Dirk looked at the tattoo. Betty McCree’s face was on it and she appeared to laughing.

---

Bio: Joseph B. Cleary grew up in Westfield, NJ and now lives in the Scotch Plains NJ. He has a degree in Business Administration with a minor in English from Susquehanna University. He is employed as a substitute teacher in Scotch Plains and as a field technician for CBS and Fox sports. He is currently writing short stories while he tries to sell his first novel. He enjoys spending time at his shore house with his significant other and his dog Dilly. His work has been published in a number of literary journals and anthologies, including, Talking River Review, Children Churches and Daddies, The Prison Compendium, as well as other journals.

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