Page 74 of Crimson Desires

My eyebrows rose. “Holy fuck. How did you know?”

“Honey, I can see it in your eyes,” biker-woman said. “You’ve got this look—scared and excited, all at once. It’s the same look all first-timers have. So, what are you thinking of getting?”

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I’m not even sure if I’m ready to get a tattoo.”

Biker-woman considered that for a moment. Then, she walked over to a capsule toy vending machine. It looked like the kind you might find at a grocery store, where you could shove in a few quarters and turn a knob for a cheap mystery toy. Except there weren’t any cheap toys in this machine. Instead, there were little pieces of folded-up paper.

“Each of these little papers has a prompt. You turn this crank, and whatever you get, I’ll tattoo on you. Fifty bucks. The tattoo will take anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour. Deal?”

I felt my stomach turn. “Do I have to get the tattoo?”

Biker-woman laughed, but it wasn’t mean-spirited. “No, of course not. But you’ll still have to pay for the spin.”

Jack nudged me. “Go for it, Aster. If you end up not wanting the tattoo, you don’t have to get it.”

“You sure?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, then,” I said, a thrilling anxiety humming in my chest.

I reached for the knob and cranked it. One time. Two times. Three times. Then, a capsule was dispensed. I withdrew the capsule from the machine and twisted it open. Then, I unraveled the paper inside.

The little strip of paper read: WORD TATTOO. UP TO 20 LETTERS.

Instantly, I knew what I wanted. And I knew that I was ready to commit to it. I smiled and gave biker-woman a nod.

She clapped her hands, excited. “Yes! I was hoping you’d get something good. Come on, take a seat. My name’s Electra, by the way.”

“Is that your real name?” I asked, taking a seat at one of the benches.

“Sure. It’s what everyone but the government calls me. Doesn’t get much more real than that,” Electra said.

Good God. This has got to be the coolest woman that has ever walked the Earth, I thought, watching carefully as Electra brought out a tablet. I told her the phrase that I wanted tattooed on me, and she used a Bluetooth printer to make a stencil.

Then came deciding on placement. After a moment of deliberation, I chose the inside of my left forearm.

Electra seemed apprehensive of my choice. “What line of work are you in, honey? I don’t usually do job-stoppers on people who haven’t had ink before.”

“I work the merch table for a touring rock band,” I said. Wincing, I corrected myself. “But that’s not my permanent job. Once my contract is up, I’m going to go back to what I was doing before that—which is waitressing.” Saying the words out loud left an inexplicably heavy feeling in my chest.

“Alright. I can get behind that,” Electra said. “Let’s do this.”

She placed the stencil on my arm. Once I’d agreed on placement, she began prepping her tattoo gun and ink. From the sidelines, Jack watched us. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking with the mask in front of his face, but I figured that he was happy.

Electra propped my arm on a leather pad. “Last chance to back out. You ready to do this?”

“I’m ready,” I said. “But just so that I can mentally prepare myself: is this going to hurt?”

“A little,” Electra admitted with a chuckle.

“Okay. I can live with that. Do your worst.”

As soon as the needle of Electra’s tattoo gun hit my skin, I winced. However, the buzzing pain wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d expected it to be. I wasn’t sure if it was because my adrenaline had kicked in, or if I simply had a good pain tolerance.

Electra paused once to ask if I was okay. She let me know that unless I asked for a break, she would keep going until the tattoo was finished.

After a while, the scratching pain of the tattoo gun dulled. Once that happened, I began asking Electra questions. I asked her about how she got into tattooing and about how she’d realized that she wanted an art career.

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