The Cost of a Tattoo

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Ilse is hunched over her sketches when he walks into her tattoo parlour, his tennis shoes shuffling on the black and white linoleum.

‘Um… Is this the place where, like…’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Is this the place with the tattoos that make you forget stuff?’

Ilse sits up from her sketching and pushes masses of black hair away from her impassive face. She looks him up and down, from the slicked back blonde hair to his polo shirt and white knuckles clutching a phone. He looks too nervous to be a rat, she thinks to herself, and money’s money, after all. ‘Yeah, this is the place.’

‘Ah, I’m glad I found you.’ He steps closer to the counter, peering around Ilse into the parlour behind her. ‘Do you have availability today? Um. Do you have time now?’

She raises an eyebrow and turns to follow his gaze. They look at the empty hydraulic chair which dominates the cramped space. Several stainless steel trolleys are pushed in the corners around it, each with several small drawers. Drawings of tattoo designs adorn the walls, alongside a painting of a woman leaning over a creek with her fingers tracing the water’s surface. Punk music plays over the shop speakers. She turns back to him. ‘Yeah, I’m free now. What are you after?’

‘Great!’ His voice too high. He clears his throat and regains his composure. ‘Great. So, I was thinking an eagle or a bird or something on my chest?’

‘How big?’

‘Maybe, like my hand or something?’ He places a palm on his pec to demonstrate.

‘Okay. If you have some reference images you can show me on your phone, that would be helpful. Come through.’ She stands and motions for him to follow. ‘Name?’

‘Name? Ah, my name is Otto.’

‘First time, Otto?’

‘Getting a tattoo? Um, yeah. First time.’ He stands next to the hydraulic chair and watches as she pushes her sleeves up her arms to reveal a colourful patchwork of designs. Two dice, an alligator with a knife through its leg, a panther appearing to climb her skin, a bleeding heart, and too many more to appreciate in the moment. ‘You do all those?’ He points at her tattoos.

‘I wish!’ She smiles. ‘No, these are all by other artists.’

‘Yeah, cool.’ Remembering himself, he uses his phone to quickly find images of eagles he had pinned earlier, then hands the phone to Ilse.

‘Okay, this is helpful. Monochrome and realistic.’

He shrugs. ‘Sure. But, um…’

She looks up from his phone, waiting for him to finish.

‘But, like, do I actually get to choose the design? I heard that it comes out based on the memory I want to forget.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ She gives the phone back to him. ‘How it looks in the end isn’t in my control, but I still need to start with the reference image you want, just like a normal tattoo.’

‘Right. Okay.’ He nods.

‘Take a seat, the prep work will take a minute.’ She hands him a consent form and pen as he sits down.

‘So,’ Otto shifts noisily, his back rubbing on the black vinyl of the chair. ‘Is it that easy? When I walk out of here, I’ll have some kind of tattoo and my bad memories will be gone?’

‘I wouldn’t call it easy, but in short, yes.’ She pulls on a pair of latex gloves and sits on a small, wheeled stool next to him. ‘As long as it’s a single, discrete memory – I can’t do complex stuff like removing the memories built up over many years of a recently deceased loved one.’

He absently begins tapping the pen against his knuckles. ‘It’s kinda cheating, though, don’t you think? Get a tattoo and ‘whoosh’, your sin is gone.’

‘Well, the memory is gone. Which is different to absolution.’

‘Right. Yeah. I suppose that’s true.’

Otto watches Ilse spray a large trolley next to the chair, wipe it down, and cover the top in glad wrap. She then opens various drawers and systematically retrieves a variety of items, arranging them on the trolley. First, she places a disposable shaving razor and a bottle with a long nozzle and clear liquid in one corner. Different ink bottles come out next, blacks and also something clear. Then a small mountain of paper towel, neatly stacked on top of each other, and assorted needle cartridges in sealed packages.

‘Will you… Um. Will you know what memory I want to remove? Will you see it or something?’ Otto asks quietly.

Ilse stands up and turns around, reaching toward a shelf for an unopened box of large popsicle sticks. ‘Yup, that’s part of the deal.’ She says over her shoulder.

‘Oh.’

She sits back down and waits for him to say something more, maybe to express regret.

Instead, he looks down at the form in his hands, brow furrowed over downcast eyes.

‘Look, don’t worry,’ Ilse tells him. ‘I’ve seen it all. I’ve had murderers and a paedophile priest. A dude who crashed a plane and was the only survivor. A woman who fucked another woman, against the tenets of her faith. People who want to forget the worst abuses inflicted by their parents and loved ones. I even had a guy who wanted to forget that he had fucked a pig. This was particularly weird because he walked in eating a bacon sandwich.’

He looks up with a small smile.

‘Trust me, you have nothing to worry about.’

‘Oh.’ He exhales and his shoulders relax. ‘You’ve seen a lot. I don’t think my memory is as bad as all that.’

‘Hmmm.’ She returns to collecting items.

‘I don’t really understand what I did, though.’ He looks down at his hands and starts pulling at a thread on his pants. ‘I hurt someone, I know that much, and I can’t stand how it feels.’

‘Don’t worry about me, I’m sure I’ll have seen worse.’ She keeps going with her preparations. Next is a tub of Vaseline. She uses one of the sticks to scoop out a big glob and smear it in the centre of the top of the trolley.

Otto is quiet for a moment before speaking again. ‘Do you have any sins you wish you could forget? Is seeing all these terrible memories your penitence?’

‘Maybe.’ Ilse’s voice is crisp and final as she pauses to assess her trolley. She nods, pushes it aside and turns back to him. ‘Okay, take off your shirt.’

He quickly signs the consent form and hands it back to Ilse, then pulls his shirt over his head. ‘Will it hurt?’

With a small knowing smile, she takes his shirt and puts it on a nearby bench. ‘Yeah, all tattoos hurt. Nothing I can do about that, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s okay.’

‘Show me again where you want it.’

Otto places his left palm on his exposed right pec.

‘Okay. I need payment up front. Cash.’

‘Oh?’ He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out his wallet. ‘I guess that makes sense, people might forget the value of why they’re here by the time the tattoo is done.’

‘That’s right, actually.’ She says, raising an eyebrow. 

‘How much?’

She points at the form he gave her with the price clearly displayed.

‘Right, sorry.’ He blushes and hands her cash.

Ilse stuffs the wad in her pocket, then drags the trolley beside her and picks up the razor and nozzled bottle. She sprays Otto’s chest and carefully shaves a light spread of hair where he had pointed, then grabs some paper towel and wipes the mess clear. She sits back down on the stool. Tying her hair up, she looks him in the eyes. 

‘And you’re sure about this?’ She says. ‘Memories fade but tattoos don’t.’

‘This memory can’t fade fast enough.’ He nods firmly. ‘I’m sure. Do I need to do anything? Like think of the memory or something?’

‘No. Your memory will reveal itself when it’s time.’ She changes her gloves and picks up her tattoo gun. ‘Sit back.’

She turns the gun on and inspects it for a moment, making sure it is going at the right speed. Then she dips it in ink and turns back to Otto. She glances up at his face, pausing only for a moment.

Ilse then presses the gun to his flesh, eliciting a restrained wince from him, and begins to draw. The gun buzzes loudly in their ears, partially drowning out the music. It furiously hammers away at Otto’s skin, hundreds of times a second, depositing tiny beads of ink just below the surface as she moves her hand. The process begins like any freehand tattoo. She draws, and the ink bleeds into his skin. Every few minutes she uses paper towel to wipe excess ink away from the surface of the skin so that she can see the fresh lines underneath.

At first, he flinches each time she places the fast-moving needle tip on him, but his reaction gradually lessens. He stares straight ahead, concentrating on something out the front window.

As they both focus – Otto on sitting through the pain, and Ilse on her technique – their eyes simultaneously begin to cloud and turn a creamy white, as though both are rapidly developing acute cataracts.

Her hands move methodically. She re-inks and returns to etching Otto’s skin, over and over. And as she draws, the lines imprinted in his chest begin to shift and redraw themselves. Her body keeps moving, as if through muscle memory alone, but her gaze begins to disconnect with reality, and the white over her eyes thickens.

His cloudy eyes remain fixed, staring straight ahead and unseeing. As his breathing slows, the excess liquid on the top of his skin starts moving on its own, finding pores and gaps to sink in between.

Ilse’s disembodied hands keep going, and she is drawn into a place in Otto’s mind. Waves of his unwanted memory wash through her.

*

 Ilse looks through Otto’s eyes at a glass of wine. The image is blurry and soundless at first, but as she watches, the outline of a woman sitting on a couch opposite him begins to take shape. The woman’s bright red lips move as she speaks, standing out against the fuzziness. She keeps touching her hair and smiling. Ilse’s view then jiggles as Otto laughs silently and brings the glass up to his face to take a sip.

The vision fades.

Now Otto and his companion are standing in the same room, leaning against each other and dancing. The woman’s cheek brushes gently against his face. Their feet are slowly stepping as their hips sway from side to side. Otto pulls back before the woman can feel his dick rising in his pants. He smiles down at her, fingers still interlocked with hers.

The vision fades.

The couple are lying naked on a bed. She is on her back, and he is stretched out beside her, his hand pressed against her jaw and pushing her head up. The woman’s back arches and Ilse feels Otto’s rock-hard cock throbbing as though it were her own. He pinches one of the woman’s nipples with his other hand and she whimpers slightly. ‘A little pain is good, isn’t it?’ He whispers. She nods as best she can and grabs his arm, pulling him closer to her.

The vision fades.

Otto is fucking the woman from behind with her arms pinned behind her back. She moans and clutches the sheets as she pushes her arse into him. He responds by putting one of his feet on the bed beside her so that he can get in deeper. ‘A bit too much.’ The woman mumbles into the pillow. Otto grabs her long dark hair, pushes her face down and drives his cock into her harder and faster, again and again. Ilse thinks she hears muffled sounds coming from the woman, but he doesn’t let up. ‘Trust me, baby, the pain is good. Good girl… That’s right, you can take i-ii-iiiit!’ He stops hammering and shudders as he cums.

The vision fades.

‘What do you mean it hurt in a bad way?’ Otto is saying. The woman is sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from him. ‘I don’t understand, I thought you like it rough. You said you like that stuff, too.’ The woman tries to hide a wet sniff. He leans forward and puts a hand on her shoulder, but she doesn’t turn around.

‘Rough is one thing, but that fucking hurt. There’s nothing quite like going too far to take the fun out of it.’ The woman says, voice low. She is silent for a time before she finally finishes. ‘And you wouldn’t stop when I said no.’

‘God… I’m so sorry, was it really that bad?’

‘You scared me.’ The woman stands up and Otto’s guilt churns in his stomach.

‘Please… Heidi. Please, don’t tell anyone.’

The woman turns back to face him. ‘Fuck you, Otto.’

*

Ilse emerges from Otto’s mind, back to reality.

Green and brown colours quickly return to her eyes, but his remain a thick white, vacant. She takes a deep breath and lowers her hand, revealing a beautiful crow on his chest. The last tattooed feather floats down from his collarbone and settles in place, sealing Otto’s fate. She puts the tattoo gun down and stretches her arms above her head, audible clicks sounding from her shoulders and wrists.

He blinks and rotates his head sluggishly from side to side, like a slow-motion exercise. He turns and looks at Ilse for a moment, no expression of recognition on his face, then looks down at his chest. His eyes widen, and his mouth gapes. He looks back at Ilse, then down again at his new tattoo with a generous smile.

‘WOW!’ He looks back at Ilse. ‘You’re all done? Can I have a look in the mirror?’

‘Go ahead, just don’t touch it.’

Otto stands up, somewhat stiff after sitting still for so long in the chair, and goes to a mirror hanging on the wall. ‘I love it! Wow!’

She starts tidying her trolley, beginning with throwing out piles of paper towel, now soggy and black with excess ink. ‘Come back so I can take photos and clean you up. I’ll give you information on after-care, too.’

He touches the skin around the tattoo and flexes his pec muscles in the mirror, a huge grin on his face. Eventually he returns to the chair and sits down, the blue colour only very slowly returning. ‘How much do I owe you?’

‘You paid already.’

‘I did? Oh, good.’ His legs swing slightly while she picks up her phone to take photos of the new piece. ‘Sorry.’ He smiles apologetically when he kicks her by accident.

She nods and continues to take photos from different angles, moving a light behind her as she goes.

‘Is it too forward to ask if you’re seeing someone?’ Otto asks after a moment.

‘Yes.’ She puts her phone down.

‘Yes, you’re seeing someone?’

She ignores him and hands over a sheet of paper. ‘Take this. In a few minutes you won’t remember why you came here, and by tonight you won’t remember me or this place. So, make sure you keep this because it has all the aftercare information you need to make sure your ink will heal properly.’

‘I won’t remember anything?’

‘Nope.’

Otto’s brow furrows and he opens his mouth, as though about to say something, then closes it again. He folds the paper and puts it in his back pocket. He returns to swinging his legs and watching Ilse pick up some towel and the nozzled bottle. She wipes again at the bird where some tiny beads of blood have formed, and he winces slightly. ‘Why do you do this?’

‘I love tattooing. I don’t know why I can take peoples’ memories, but I figure there must be a reason.’

He nods slowly. ‘But why do you do it for everyone? Why help people like that pig-fucker and priest you mentioned before?’

Ilse pauses and looks at his face, at his still-milky eyes. ‘Fuck it, you won’t remember.’ She puts the bottle down and throws the paper towel in the bin, then turns back to him. ‘That pig-fucker and priest both died within a few months of coming to see me. I looked them up years ago. Turns out that anyone who repeats in some way the memory they wanted erased after seeing me, dies within a few months.’

Otto’s eyes grow into huge round, opaque circles as she speaks. ‘What?!’

‘I don’t know the details.’ She shrugs. ‘When I learnt that the woman who liked having sex with women had been disowned by her religious family and died soon after, I stopped looking up my old clients. She was one of the loveliest people I had ever met. She didn’t deserve that fate.’

He chews his lip. ‘I… I’m not sure I understand.’

She laughs and pats him on the knee. ‘That’s not your fault, don’t worry. You’re going to be walking around with a vague, forgetful tattoo hangover for at least 24 hours. All part of the process.’

‘The… process?’ He looks around the tattoo parlour. ‘What process?’

Ilse doesn’t respond. She turns back to her trolley and scrounges around for cling wrap and tape. When she finds it, she pulls some of the thin plastic sheet from its roll and places it over his new tattoo.

Otto watches, his head slowly turning to follow her movements. He looks down at her touch, his eyes gradually becoming bluer, and smiles. ‘Look at that! Man, what a sick bird. And you have such soft hands. Thank you so much!’

She swats his hand away as he reaches towards the tattoo, then puts tape along the top and side edges of the patch of cling wrap. ‘Don’t touch.’ She says firmly.

The corner of his smile lifts higher. ‘What? Like this?’ He pokes himself through the wrap.

‘Yes! Ugh, your funeral if it gets infected.’ She bats his hand away again, but he catches her fingers and holds them still. ‘See? So soft.’ He caresses her arm.

‘Dude, let go.’ Ilse pushes him away.

He drops her hand immediately and raises his two palms up in a show of peace. ‘I don’t suppose you’re single, are you?’

‘I don’t date clients.’ She starts gathering things up from the trolley.

Otto leans forward and brushes some hair from her shoulder, his smile softening. ‘Not even a one-off fling? No strings attached?’

‘Leave it! I said no, okay?’ She stands up and hands him his shirt.

He gets off the chair and accepts the shirt. ‘What about just a drink? I would love to hear more about how these tattoos work.’ He takes a step closer to Ilse in the small space.

‘Jesus, take a hint, would you!’ She pushes him away and he stumbles back, landing on the chair. Before he can right himself, both are drawn to a flash where her hand had touched his arm. A black patch swirls on his skin and turns into thin black shapes, moving as Ilse and Otto watch in simultaneous horror.

‘What the fuck?!’ He yells.

Ilse brings her hands up and backs away, shaking her head as though she can’t believe what she is seeing. The shapes morph into lines, then come together in the shape of letters, and the word ‘rapist’ finally appears scrawled on his skin.

Otto shouts incoherently and rubs at the word, but it doesn’t smear or budge. His face snaps up to look at Ilse. ‘What the fuck did you do to me?!’

‘I have no idea!’ Her eyes are even wider than his.

He launches towards her, but she catches his clumsy arm as it swings wide, then pushes him away again, harder this time. He careens backward, almost tripping over, and catches himself on the back of the front counter.

Before their eyes, more tattoos begin emerging, but not just where she had touched him this time. They appear all over his bare arms, chest and back. One on his bicep depicts two guys spit roasting a woman who has tears in her eyes. A hand slapping a woman’s face emerges on his shoulder. Another develops of a woman lying on her back with her legs spread wide open, her labia on full display – that one on his stomach.

Otto’s breathing quickens. His face is a deep red and hard as stone. He balls his right hand into a fist and steps towards Ilse, but stops in his tracks when more tattoos materialise. A woman’s face, bruised and bloodied on his forearm. A set of handcuffs on his neck. A whip and ball gag. Then the crow on his chest swirls away. In its place Heidi’s face materialises, her cheeks being squeezed by a meaty hand.

He screams in outrage. ‘GET THEM OFF ME!’

‘I can’t!’ Ilse shouts back. ‘I don’t know what’s happening!’ She pleads, shrinking away from the nightmare playing out in front of her.

He scrubs furiously at the tattoos with his shirt, but they stay fast, as though they have been there for years.

‘I don’t understand…’ Ilse whispers, watching as he claws at his skin, drawing small spots of blood. Then her expression changes from confusion and horror. Curiosity washes over her, and she peers closer at his chest, at the place where the bird has been replaced by Heidi’s face.

‘Holy shit.’ Her eyes round, she looks at his face, then down at the images of other women, each distinct from the other. ‘Heidi wasn’t the first time, was she? You have forced your love of pain and power on other women before.’

Otto doesn’t seem to hear her, though. More tattoos appear one by one so that he is almost covered. He looks wildly around the room, eyes darting from side to side, seeing past Ilse, then spots the nozzled bottle and towels on the other side of the room. He lurches towards them, picks them up and begins to spray and scrub again, whimpering slightly.

‘That guilt you felt when you realised you had hurt Heidi wasn’t guilt for her at all, was it?’ She continues. ‘You were just guilty because you knew she wasn’t going to put up with your gaslighting. I think you knew what you were doing and were just scared that she was going to warn everyone about you.’

Otto drops the bottle and towels and looks at Isle with a frown. His eyes are now a piercing bright blue. ‘Who the fuck are you? Can you help me with this shit?’ He barely waits for her to respond before he begins smashing the furniture in her parlour, yelling incomprehensibly.

Ilse grabs her phone and begins dialling the police. Staring him down, she waits for someone to pick up. ‘Get the fuck out of my shop.’ She growls.

He freezes and stares back at her like a rabid dog caught on a heavy chain, unable to get closer.

‘NOW.’ She stabs her index finger towards the front door.

Otto bares gritted teeth, then turns and stomps out of the parlour, pulling his shirt over his head. He slams the door and pauses outside, glaring at her through the window. His face is red with rage and he mouths the words: ‘I’ll be back.’

‘No, you won’t.’ Ilse says.