Page 33 of Devilish Ink

“Er, no cuffs needed.”

“That’s a shame…”

I did most of the prep in silence. Lee’s steady breathing lulled me like waves against a small boat.

Night fell quickly outside the shop. The occasional beam of headlights flashed like a lighthouse. Otherwise we were alone without a shore in sight.

Lee gripped the edge of the leather chair when the tattoo gun made its first bite.

He laughed through slightly clenched teeth. “It doesn’t get easier, huh?”

Most of my clients found the second tattoo the hardest. The thrill of the first had faded. The body provided slightly less adrenaline, slightly less natural painkillers. There was just the steady, unrelenting piercing of the skin.

“It must be a dream come true,” Lee said, eyebrows pinched as I continued, “getting to travel around the world. Seeing everything life has to offer. I can’t even imagine.”

I dipped the tattoo gun into fresh ink. It gave me a chance to think over what I was going to say.

With most people I’d simply agree, give some bland triviality about how great travel was, and move on. With most people the easiest way was just telling them what they wanted to hear. This should have been exactly what I told Lee.

“To be honest, it’s been hard,” I said, wondering what it was about him that made me want to…share myself. To speak my truth. “It’s like I’ve been carrying bricks around in my duffel bag. And each new city is another impossible distance to lug them.”

Lee was silent for a moment.

“Bricks you brought with you from Dublin?” he guessed.

I sighed. Sitting back. Stretching.

I stared at the compass I’d tattooed first. Ireland beneath it.

My home. My hell.

“Sometimes it’s like I can’t even see what’s in front of me,” I said, leaning back over him. “I’ll be in front of some of the most beautiful sights in Europe, places people flock from all over the world to see, and all I’ll see is…”

Escape routes. Strangers. Long nights alone. Another day of surviving. Another plane to catch, a train to run after, bus to get lost on.

“It’s all-consuming,” Lee said in a voice hardly above a whisper, “when someone hurts us.”

“When they won’t stop,” I added in a hollow voice.

I looked up to blink away the start of a tear.

I saw the man standing across the street.

Him.

I jolted with the familiar fear, tattoo gun tearing across Lee’s skin. I stumbled back but didn’t fall, Lee had caught my arm.

He pulled me back up to standing. “Ry, what is it?”

I glanced outside again.

The man who had been there was gone.

But like the impression the sun makes on the back of your eyelids, I saw him still.

A hazy figure in black. Facing the big windows.

Staring at me.

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