Page 8 of Dark Ink

I spun around and shouted into the empty auditorium, relishing the sound of my voice loud, devouring my own echo, “What the hell?”

My heart was racing in a way that frightened me. Really frightened me. My cheeks were warm and it had nothing to do with running across the cobblestoned paths of campus to get to class. I dragged my fingers through my hair, breathless yet again, and was about to turn around to look once more when I noticed the haphazard stack of big sketchpad papers on the edge of the professor’s desk.

This time it was not with giddiness or excitement or the budding of happiness that I whispered, “What the hell?”

I leafed through the stack, eyes moving quickly from one page to the next. I could move quickly because they were all the same, more or less. They were all the same girl from the chalkboard. They were all, in effect, me. Me, me, me again. I riffled through them like a child’s flipbook, watching my features move, shifting slightly, contorting strangely.

I reached the end and I let go of the whole stack. They slipped off the edge of the desk and with a whoosh like a flight of startled birds spread in all directions.

The whole of the lower portion of the lecture hall was covered with the sketch pages, covered with imitations of my face. No, imitations of the drawing of my face. The one on the chalkboard. The girl I could hardly recognise in my own mirror.

They were not as expertly done as the one on the board. But they were all clearly me. None of them captured me like the one that first transfixed me, delighted me, made me wonder for the first time in years. Maybe that was what made them especially frightening.

They all were a tiny piece of me, giving the floor the appearance of a shattered mirror.

Perhaps I should have known then that I was being drawn into something I should be wary of. Something, or someone, that was dangerous.

Something that could destroy me.

Rian

The sign read in big, bold letters, visible from all the way across the leafy quad:

FREE TATTOO.

Free, because I’d snuck into Dublin Ink that morning to grab some supplies—Mason still asleep, Conor not yet in, and Aurnia already on campus for class. And tattoo, because I was only offering one. Singular. One option. No more. No fucking less.

I’d bullied some timid first years out of their canopy where they’d been trying to get other first years to come to some sort of social. Probably with fruit punch. And no drugs. They’d left with threats to go tell on me, but they’d left, and that was all I cared about in that moment.

I’d set up my tools, laid out all the different inks, and taped the drawing I was offering for free to permanently inject into any taker’s skin. I quickly had a line across the cobblestone square in the centre of campus. Students with their hoods up against the blustery wind laughed nervously as they waited, craning their necks to see how much longer they had to wait. An industrious third year had seen the chaos and brought a twenty-four pack of cans to hawk for five euro a pop. It had the air of Temple Bar on a Saturday night. Merriment and craic. Someone played upbeat Beoga, a modern Trad band, on a little portable Bluetooth speaker.

Well, good for fucking them.

Because beneath the shade of the canopy I was sweating like a pig, antsy as hell, and raging to boot. I hadn’t smoked that morning like usual. I’d wanted to be clear-headed, focused. I didn’t want to get the tattoo wrong. A wanted poster with a botched face wasn’t worth a damn. And I had a lot of wanted posters to ink.

I don’t know which one I was on. It could have been the first. It could have been the twentieth. Hell, for all I really knew I’d tattooed through the night and the girl with squirming hips and a ring through her septum was my lucky hundredth customer. But out of the noise of the ever-growing crowd, which now included plenty just come to watch me work, came a familiar voice.

“Rian?”

I was almost convinced it was her. The girl. My Raglan Road girl. Such a sweet voice. I was certain that I would know it when I heard it. As if from a dream. Or a past life. Or from somewhere deep inside my soul. I looked up with swelling hope.

My face fell and I grumbled, “Oh, it’s you.”

Aurnia laughed, slightly nervously, as she ducked under the canopy, glancing down the length of the bustling line.

“Yeah,” she said, fingers grazing the edge of the taped-down image I’d drawn for the tattoo on the table, “nice to see you too, boyo.”

I bent back over my work, moving as quickly as I dared without compromising the perfection of the features. I sensed Aurnia hovering over me. I bristled at her closeness. At her nervous tapping of her fingers against her thighs.

“Um, so, what’s the craic, Rian?” she finally asked.

“Aurnia, I’m up to ninety,” I answered brusquely. “Do you see the length of this line?”

I glanced up to see that Aurnia was not looking at the line. Not looking at the beachball someone had brought to entertain the masses. Not at the general atmosphere of fun that was wrong, all wrong. This was serious. We were finding someone. We all needed to find someone.

Aurnia was looking at me. “Rian, can I talk to you?”

I dipped the tattoo gun into the ink and shrugged. “Sure look, you can talk. No sayin’ if I’ll hear much. I have to crack on.”

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