There's Something Wrong With My New Tattoo

They say to never get a tattoo while you're drunk. Honestly it's the only way I can stand to sit in the chair for that long. Maybe it's the sound the motor makes. Maybe it's the anticipation of the needle touching your skin for the first time and that initial shock of pain. Maybe it's the smell of disinfecting alcohol.
It's probably just my anxiety.
For whatever reason I can't stand to sit in that damn chair for more than five minutes if I'm not at least a little bit tipsy. And that was the state I remembered being in when I went into the shop I had been coming to for the past couple of years, "Danny's Dojo", being called this despite the fact that the owner's name wasn't Danny and the building it was located in having never been a dojo.
"Hey Mike, finally coming in for that chest piece?" Sally, the front counter girl, said as I shut the tinted front door behind me.
"Would you not call it that please?" I said in response, "I'm nervous enough as it is."
She looked at the clipboard sitting on the display case of piercings she sat behind, "You only cancelled your appointment twice this time."
It was a bad habit I'd developed when I got my first tattoo. When my appointment day would roll around I'd cancel it with only a couple hours notice. I'm not an idiot and I know this isn't fun for tattoo artists to deal with. A fact I learned quite quickly when the first shop I found for my first tattoo bitched me out over the phone when I cancelled my appointment for the third time in a row. The reason I'd been coming to this tattoo shop is because they seemed to understand my anxieties and didn't get mad when I cancelled my appointments more than once.
"I'm sorry Sally. You just..."
She waved her hand in dismissal, "I'm just screwing with you Mike. It's okay."
I sighed before reaching into my pocket and pulling out the Ativan I grabbed in case the three beers weren't enough to calm me down, "Tom ready?"
"As soon as you sign the usual forms." She picked up the clipboard and handed it to me over the display case.
I took a look at the standard forms the shopped used. Yes I knew the risks of getting a today. Yes I was going to pay the promised amount of two hundred dollars. No I wasn't drunk or otherwise inebriated.
I looked up when I signed the last form. Sally was looking at me with a glare telling me she could smell the beer on my breath. But she didn't say a single word when I handed the forms back to her.
This is why I come to this shop.
"Tom's in his usual room." She said as she took the forms from the clipboard and filed them away with a stack of other papers next to the register.
I thanked her and swallowed the Ativan as I stepped down the hallway towards Tom's alcove. It probably wasn't necessary as my nerves weren't feeling too amped up but it was always better to be safe than sorry.
"Mike! Always happy to see you." Tom was facing away from the chair unpacking needles from their individual wrappers.
I listened to the crinkling of the wrapper as each different sized needle was unpacked. On second thought that Ativan was probably a good idea.
Tom turned his head around and motioned his gloved hand towards the chair, "I'll be a couple more minutes. I left the stencils out for you to look at."
I sat in the chair, taking particular care to make sure the cushion didn't squeak or make a farting sound, and looked at the various different designs Tom had drawn up. The first one was an almost solid black set of scales with an elaborate top in the middle that ended in a dual prong.
"Where'd you find the design for the top of it? It looks kind of medieval" I trusted Tom's judgement when it came to art as the closest I got to artistic talent was my day job as a P.I. combing through legal documents and DMV records.
"Some courthouse in Louisiana. Take a look at the one under it." He said as he opened up some ink bottles and set them down on the solid metal tray next to his rolling chair.
I did as he asked and looked at the next stencil page. This one showed a more simplified scales with little decoration. What made it special however was the human heart sitting on one side of the scale and a feather on the other.
"Where did this come from?" I asked.
"Egyptian hieroglyph. It's one of the major mythologies about scales being used to judge people. Anubis, the Egyptian god of death, would weigh your heart--"
I recognized the story so interrupted him, "Against a feather to see if you were worthy of entering the underworld."
He laughed, "Yep."
I looked at the stencil again. This particular drawing showed the heart being heavier on the scale than the feather. Which meant whoever's heart this was on the scale was screwed out of his afterlife.
"I like it." I really did. Most of my job consisted of doing in-depth background checks for a couple of different law firms. I didn't know exactly why they wanted me to look for these asshats most of the time but they didn't pay me to be nosy about their business. Most of the people they sent me to look into wouldn't've been able to pass this test on the scale.
"No need to hurry about your choice. Take a look at the other ones and let me know which one you'd like." Another reason I kept coming to this shop was because of how damn nice and patient Tom was. None of the other stencils stood out to me enough to even remember what they looked like specifically. Just different interpretations of the Scales of Justice.
I could feel the Ativan starting to kick in at this point and settled on the design I wanted, "The Egyptian one."
Tom turned around and smiled, "The shading we discussed over the phone okay?"
"Yeah." The drug didn't take it's time and I was to the point that I don't think I could've gotten out of the chair if I wanted to. I grabbed my earbuds and phone out of my pocket and plugged them in.
"I'll tap you on the shoulder if I have any questions for you." He said, turning around and pressing the motor pedal down to test out the tattoo gun.
It buzzed loudly.
"You up for..." Was the last thing I remember Tom saying before the Ativan kicked in fully.
That combined with the alcohol probably had not been a good idea.
​
***
​
The next thing I remember I was in an Uber being driven by some grey haired old man and I had a massive headache.
"Ugh," I grabbed my forehead and rubbed at my temples with thumb and pointer finger, "what happened?"
"Said you were gonna take a nap. You weren't out more than five minutes." The old man said as he took a left on Country Club road. That meant we were less than two minutes from my townhouse.
Ativan had never made me blackout before. Even on the few occasions I'd combined it with a couple of drinks. Although it would explain the splitting headache.
"You ok? You aren't looking too hot." I saw the grey haired man gaze at me through the rearview mirror. I couldn't quite identify the look on his face. A mixture of concern and shock would be my best guess.
I looked back into the rearview mirror and understood immediately why he had given me such a strange look. Instead of the tattoo being on the back of my right shoulder like it was supposed to be it was directly on my forehead.
"What the ****!" I yelled into the rearview mirror. I regretted it as it caused a sharp pain to ring through my head.
"Jesus christ!" The driver swerved for a second when he was surprised by my yell, "If you're gonna yell warn me next time please."
I was hyperventilating and on the verge of a panic attack. Why the hell was there a tattoo on my head? It was supposed to be on my shoulder. Laser removal was so goddamn expensive and how in the hell was I going to get anymore jobs with a tattoo on my goddamn face. As soon as I got home Tom was--
"We're here." The grey haired man said.
I looked out the window. I saw the front gate of my townhouse and almost leapt from the backseat. The old man huffed as I slammed the car door and rushed inside the townhouse.
"God ****ing dammit," I said as I took my keys out of my pocket. My hands were shaking so badly it took three separate tries before I could fit the house key into the lock, "I'm going to sue them into the ground."
Once the front door was open I ran into the bathroom and turned on the light. I knew I wasn't going to enjoy what I saw but I knew I was going to need at least a photo. That plan stopped immediately when I finally got the courage to look in the mirror.
The tattoo was no longer on my forehead. It had migrated, somehow, to my left temple.
"What the ****?" I turned my head to get a closer look at the tattoo. It was almost like it was hiding from my attempts to look at it as it was now located just under the edge of my hairline.
Whatever it was it wasn't the Scales of Justice Tom and I had discussed doing for the past three weeks. It looked similar though. Almost like a stick figure carrying a very simplified version of a scale.
"What the ****?" I yelled into the mirror as I stared at the tattoo as it moved, ever so slowly, a quarter of an inch under my hairline.
I got my phone out as quickly as I could. If this little ******* was going to go under my hairline I was going to get a picture of it before it could manage to hide from me. Unfortunately my shaking hands couldn't get to the camera button in time to catch it before the tattoo was no longer visible.
"****!" I yelled at the mirror. At my own shaking hands. At the tattoo that was MOVING in front of me. I don't know much about tattoos besides the ones on my body but I knew for a fact that they weren't supposed to move.
Tom is getting so sued tomorrow.
​
r/cawdor23


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