It Was Going Just Fine Until You Woke Up.

The alcohol swab leaves a cool burn on Caleb’s skin.

June has dragged over one lone light which she positions immediately above him. He lays back on a leather body chair in her tattoo parlor. He’s not quite sure if she’s allowed to be here at this time. When she unlocked the door and moved into the storefront she didn’t turn on any lights. He bumped and bumbled his way after her, until she turned on the one light and stood as a silhouette before what he could only think of as the operating table.

Caleb feels the needle on his arm like a sudden jab. As if she’s dug her nails into his flesh going after a blackhead. Then the white-hot pain of metal that has dug inside him makes him hiss and clench his teeth.

He begins to sweat.

The tiny handheld needle sticks into him and then pulls out in rapid motions of her fingers. Each time it comes out it makes a ‘ticking’ noise, like a soft fleshy bomb implanted within him.

It’s okay, it’s on my shoulder. I can hide it at work… Maybe it will even look cool, maybe daring. He keeps a smile on his face for her despite the pain and the greater revelation of getting a tattoo and knowing his life will be irrevocably changed by it. This isn’t a haircut, or growing fat. This tattoo is sticking around forever. It will be on his naked reflection for years. It will sag as his skin grows flaccid and sallow. It will be on his mummified skeleton for years after his death, like some old scar or brand.

Maybe he’s overthinking this a little.

“Why do it this way? Just you and the needle?” He asks. He figures talking is better than the dead-end silence and the sound of the needle removing it’s insectoid head from his epidermis.

“Hmm…” June waits a bit before answering. “I guess because the machines are loud…like wasps. And this is soft and more intimate, like kissing. Like if I could kiss this on you and leave a painted symbol…I’d rather do that.”

Me too. Caleb thinks, also seizing with the pain.

She looks at him with the needle hovering. Her eyes are blue and all knowing.

Caleb smirks and looks away, back at the needle. June hides the site on his lower shoulder with her palm.

“What are you doing? Let me see.”

“No.” She says, dabbing the needle. “You can see later, when it’s done.”

“This isn’t some random….” Caleb trails off. This is me. MY body. You can’t just draw on it without me knowing if it’s good or not. I just met you…

Yes. He did just meet her. And yes, she has already changed him irrevocably.

Didn’t he say he’d do anything to make this work?

Besides, it's just a tattoo.

June is almost done with the work. It’s some of her finest.

Not even the vodka still rampaging through her system can deny her that. This is the work for which she might be known someday. In her circle at least. She looks again at the symbol being etched into the flesh of this man who trusts her so completely, and she’s at once proud of its elegance and also disgusted that it will harm him so much.

That's not disgust. She thinks. Just pity. He's just a little nicer than my usual dates.

As the last of the symbol appears, June misses and digs a little too deep. Caleb, who's been holding his breath like a balloon ready to pop, let's out a small cry, then laughs in embarrassment.

“Didn't expect that.” He admits.

“Sorry.” Says June. “Got a little distracted.”

She finishes the work in silence.

At some point, impossibly, Caleb falls asleep.

He feels lulled into it by June’s cool fingers. Her hands crawl across his body, insistent and careful like tentative spiderlings. He is comforted by the knowledge that he is watched over by a master at her work.

What finishes him off, drawing him into the dark bay of a sleep deeper than he's ever known, is when June begins to hum a slow song. No, it's a song that was once fast and is now slowed down into lullaby-like speed.

His eyes flutter to an early close, and he dreams of nothing at all.

June watches the sleep take hold of Caleb. She's glad.

It took him a while but he made it. Most people are drunk enough at this point to fall asleep when they hit the chair but Caleb was still looking at her with those bright, daydreaming eyes when he laid back. So the first tattoo she made was one that let him sleep. She did it right on his shoulder.

It's the least she can do for him.

She gets to work, going slowly and taking breaks. Last time she was rushing it. Stupid, she knows, but last time she'd been too emotional. Too full of hate.

It’s different with Caleb.

Now she is of a clear mind. The cheer and liquid electricity of earlier has worn off and in its place, the cold knowledge of her art is at hand.

She keeps the one light trained on the table as she lights the proper candles. Eventually, she will turn off the fluorescent and work by candlelight. Some of her inks are only visible in certain spectrums, like candle, moonlight, and burning housefires.

She wears her glasses and gets close to the ‘canvas’, swabbing with alcohol and tacking the needle with sharp, calculated movements.

Then she sets needle to skin.

As she goes she follows a rhythm as old as rivers running and blood pumping.

The only music is the sound of her humming the proper chants and Caleb’s soft breathing.

So much like a little boy sleeping. She thinks. Most of them sound like diesel engines and it ruins the ambiance. But she can't start thinking like this, not about his name, or the way his hair has fallen down over his eyes and the soft sound of his breathing and the way it might feel upon her neck. She can't think of those things at all because she will fuck up the-

She fucks up the line work.

A tack too far to the left and the Dionysian wheel she’d been making is ruined. She hisses, hurls her needle into the dark abyss of the shop, and drops her head into her hands.

She will have to get rid of him, and start all over. Combing the internet for someone with no connections, young enough, and also desperately lonely enough to follow her hopelessly into the dark.

She's so distracted with her head in her hands, trying not to cry, that she doesn't notice when Caleb wakes up.