I Thought My Free Tattoo Was A Stroke Of Luck, But I’m Terrified Of What’s Been Happening Since
By Leo Petracci
We walked home together, and when I woke up the next morning the tattoo was sore. Not just in the area applied, but above it too. And when I looked in the mirror, it was just a tad higher than I remembered.
But that was months ago, and now my friends are gone. I work at the Applebee’s that shut down Burnette’s Bistro as a bartender full time now, for lunch and dinner shifts both. And I eat there all the time, considering the hefty discount – sometimes having three or four meals throughout the day. It’s not a health problem yet though, since I’m losing weight, not gaining it. Must be all the extra work I’m doing.
I’ve gotten a few new tattoos since my friends left, all connected with my first one. The problem with having a with a lazy manager is I walk home drunk. Sometimes, even blackout, with the entire last hour of my shift a blur. And my tattoo artist was right, tattoos are addictive- during those nights, I must have stumbled back into his parlor, and had more done. I can’t remember, but I’d know when I woke up with sore skin. They were still free, though, since I never lost any cash, so I saw no problem with it. Plus the new tattoos were just as impressive as the first, and he’d even touched up the first a bit. Made the lines a bit darker, more pronounced.
But it became a problem once my entire back was covered, and the ink started spreading to my arms. The other tattoos were of a wide variety of styles too, some colored, some not, some pictures, and some designs. All expertly drawn, but it was getting to be too much.
“Damn it,” I said one morning, glancing at my bicep. It stung, and there was a copy of my original tattoo, the swirls and lines staring back up at me. So I left home, and I walked to the parlor – even though it was months before, I still knew the way. But no one answered when I knocked on the door, so I entered and looked around the inside.