Inked: A Supernatural Short Story

by Zach Bohannon

  “Zach comes out with suspense that will haunt you, and you won’t be able to look away.”

  J. Thorn, Amazon Top 100 Horror Author

  “Few horror writers work as hard as Zach Bohannon. Turn the lights low, and don’t let the blood splatter hit you.”

  Dan Padavona, author of Storberry

  “Zach Bohannon takes dark thriller and suspense to a terrifying new level, with spine tingling tales of the macabre that will keep you turning the page deep into the night.”

  David J. Delaney, Author of The Vanishing

  Inked

  by Zach Bohannon

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  INKED

  Zach Bohannon

  INKED

  Zach Bohannon

  www.zachbohannon.com

  Copyright © 2014 by Zach Bohannon. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  Proofread by Jennifer Collins

  Cover design by Johnny Digges

  www.diggescreative.com

  Inked

  It was the exact kind of day that Terry Russell dreaded. The shop was dead with the exception of a couple of hillbillies that were scanning through the books of flash displayed on the main floor of the tattoo parlor. Terry hated working at Ace of Spades Ink. Hated the look of it, the smell of it, and especially the types of clients it attracted. The only reason that he was there was so that he could save enough money to open his own shop in the future. His shop would have no flash on the wall, only do custom work, and only tattoo by appointment. But for now, he was stuck tattooing at Ace of Spades.

  He stood at the main counter and watched the disheartening scene before him, knowing what followed: one of the two rednecks would walk up to him with the most cliche and boring flash piece to tattoo on them. In his mind, Terry made wagers with himself on what the tattoo would be. Will it be an eagle? Something tribal? Or maybe a dragon carrying a rebel flag? The last one made him snicker.

  Terry leaned over the glass counter on his elbows. He tried to read a book on his smart phone but couldn’t keep focused with the two idiots bumbling as they continued to flip through the tattoo ideas on the wall. Then he heard the light bulb go off with one of them.

  “Oh fuck yeah!” one of the guys said. It was the stouter of the two.

  His friend, a slender guy sporting what pretended to be a mustache on his face, looked over to him. He tipped his camouflage hat up to try and get a look at what his buddy had found.

  “You find ya one, Ricky?”

  Ricky whipped his head to the right to move his bangs out of his face and pulled the page out of the book. Terry leaned to the side to try to see what he had picked out, but couldn’t see around his broad backside.

  The slim redneck in the hat’s eyes widened and began to glow.

  “Fuck yeah, brotha! That’s gonna be dope as hell, dude!”

  Ricky pumped his fist and made his way to the front counter. Terry slipped his phone into his pocket and faked a smile toward the two men. Ricky’s Affliction shirt—which was at least a full size too small—brought further dread and embarrassment to the situation; Terry kept on his smile.

  “Find one?” Terry asked.

  Ricky slapped the sheet down onto the counter top with enough force to knock over a display of nose rings inside the glass case.

  “Hell yeah, man. You gonna slap this on me?” He pointed to the far side of his arm. “I want it right here. Real fuckin’ big.”

  Terry could smell the stench of snuff on his breath. Could this guy be any more cliche?

  His eyes answered that question for him.

  The design that Ricky had picked out showed a rattlesnake with its jaws wide open. Its tail was on fire and there was the silhouette of a naked woman in the background with devil horns sticking out of her head. The page was faded and the colors of the image were pale, dating the flash back to the mid-nineties.

  It took everything Terry had not to laugh. But he fought the urge and looked up to Ricky and his friend.

  “Yeah, bro. Just give me a few minutes to draw it up.”

  Terry turned around to head to the art studio near the back of the parlor. He could almost feel the spit on the back of his neck as Ricky spoke at him.

  “It’s already drawn up, man. Hurry the fuck up. We ain’t got all day,” he spat at Terry.

  Terry closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.

  “It won’t take long. You guys just have a seat over there. Feel free to turn on the Playstation.”

  He heard the two men hustle to the television and begin fighting over which game to play just like two adolescent boys. Terry sighed, shook his head, and continued to the studio.

  The studio had no door, only a pale curtain that he pushed aside to enter the room. Inside, the light under the surface of the tracing table illuminated the entire room. Terry let out a groan, wishing that he could sit at the table and draw up a real tattoo. Instead, he set the flash sheet down on the table and reached for the power switch on the Thermofax transfer printer.

  He figured that Ricky and his friend must have found a game to play because they were hollering from the lobby behind a fury of explosions coming from the television. Terry rolled his eyes and grabbed a set of earbuds out of his pocket, plugging them into his phone. Getting the flash onto the transfer paper didn’t take too long, but putting on music bought him more time before having to go spend the next two hours with the two idiots. He scrolled through his music, selected Far Beyond Driven by Pantera, and got to work on preparing the atrocious tattoo.

  He ran the stencil through the machine onto the transfer paper and had the tattoo ready within just a few minutes.

  Terry pulled out his earbuds as he pushed the curtain out of the way and moved back into the lobby of the shop.

  He put on his best mask.

  “You ready to do this?”

  “Ah, shit!” Ricky said.

  He was yelling at his character on the television, a soldier in what appeared to be Iraq or some other Middle Eastern country, who had just been blown up by a bomb dropped from a plane. Ricky punched his friend on the arm and then threw the game controller onto the ground and stood. He looked over to Terry.

  “‘Bout time, man. Let’s do this shit!”

  Terry watched as the two left the controllers sprawled on the floor and let the Playstation continue to run with no intention of powering it off. He pointed behind him.

  “I’m the first booth there on the left if you wanna head on back.”

  Ricky sucked snot through his nose right as he passed by Terry. The sound brought utter disgust to Terry’s ears. He went to the television and shut the power off to it and the Playstation.

  When he got to his booth, Ricky was standing at the mirror with his shirt sleeve rolled up and he was looking at himself. He pointed to his arm.

  “Right there, man. Slap that shit on right there.”

  “Alright,” Terry said. “Stand still and we can get started.”

  Terry centered the transfer paper onto the arm and peeled it back. After three attempts—all because Ricky’s buddy kept saying That looks crooked—Terry finally got the humble blessing from Ricky to begin his work.

  ***

  Just about two hours later, Terry wiped away the last drops of blood and wet ink. He removed the latex gloves from his hands.

  “All set, man. Give it a look,” Terry said.

&nbs
p; The words couldn’t have come out of his mouth any sooner. Sitting with the two hillbillies the last two hours had been sheer hell. A punishment from the dark lord himself. If Ricky had asked You done yet? or What’s takin’ so long? one more time, Terry might have clotheslined him out of his chair.

  But it was over now.

  Ricky stood up and looked into the mirror. His eyes got so wide that his Uncle Bill Bob Paul could have driven his big rig straight through them.

  “That’s dope right there, man,” he said to his buddy.

  “Still looks a little crooked to me, Ricky,” the friend said.

  Terry ignored it, kept cleaning up his booth so that he could head home and get this day past him. He looked to Ricky.

  “Alright, man. If everything looks good, I can wrap a bandage over it real quick and set you on your way. Just be sure to follow all the care instructions on the piece of paper I gave you.”

  Ricky kept looking at himself in the mirror.

  “Yeah, yeah, it looks good man. Might be a little crooked, but no one’s gonna notice ‘cause it’s so awesome.”

  Terry raised his eyebrows and nodded. He dressed up the tattoo with some gauze and a wrap. Took the two men to the counter. Ricky paid him—no surprise to Terry, without a tip—and Terry sent the two men on their way.

  He sighed as he locked the door behind the two men and lay his forehead against it. For a few moments, he stood there with his palms pressed flat against the door. He pictured his dream tattoo shop. Many times a day he thought of it, and the impatience built tension. He exhaled, went back to his booth, grabbed his bag, and closed the place down so that he could leave for the day.

  ***

  Midnight came and went as Terry sat in the corner of his studio apartment. The room was illuminated just enough for him to see the skull he was painting sitting in the window. This was his release; he would lose himself in his art and let the brush move across the canvas and take him away from the world.

  The apartment building that he lived in stood in what was called by the locals a “revitalized community”. All this really meant was that artists, writers, musicians, and beatniks were moving in amongst the poor and corrupt, and trying to rejuvenate the area with art and an over-abundance of coffee shops.

  Terry liked the apartment and the neighborhood, but mainly just enjoyed having a place of his own that he could afford while he put away money to open his own tattoo shop. The place was small—a studio with nothing in it but his bed, his art studio shoved in the corner, a kitchenette, and a bathroom—but he didn’t mind.

  His phone vibrated on the standing food tray that he used as a bedside table. He pulled away from the trance of his strokes and ran his finger across the screen to answer.

  “Hey, sweetie,” he said.

  Amanda spoke in a warm voice on the other end of the phone. They’d been together for the past two and a half years after meeting at a heavy metal concert. The smile that he wore when she called to him bled over the phone into her ears.

  “Were we going to get together tomorrow, still?” she asked.

  “Well, I’m working on Robb tomorrow. And we have that party tomorrow night. I was thinking that I could stay with you this weekend and we could work on your piece then,” Terry said.

  They spent a few more minutes on the phone finalizing their plans for the weekend before hanging up.

  Like Terry, Amanda was an artist; a painter. She also composed scores for small, independent film productions. They’d collaborated together on a beautiful painting that Terry would soon permanently replicate on her back. He looked over at the painting, which took up a large space against his wall. Studied it.

  The piece would cover the entire surface of her back. It depicted a dark, apocalyptic scene.

  Across the wings of her back would be their interpretation of heaven. Angels with spears flying through the sky, trying to bring peace to the scene on earth. One of the scenes showed a mother reaching for her child as the young girl floated away toward one of the angels; the sorrow on their faces bled through the artwork.

  The middle of her back represented the earth. The centerpiece of the painting showed the four horsemen of the apocalypse, highlighted by one of them lobbing the head off of a woman.

  Lastly, the small of the back represented hell. The tattoo would flow down all the way through to the top of her glutes. This part of the tattoo showed hell as represented by a village in flames; the same kind of village that you might see in a third world country. Creatures were reaching to the earth, trying to bring souls down with them.

  The tattoo would be grayscale to add to it’s ominousness; no color.

  A dark take on the end of days.

  Terry didn’t feel like painting any longer. He stood and walked to the bathroom, hitting the power button for the television on the way by.

  The local news played in the background. Terry urinated and then moved to the sink to wash his face and brush his teeth.

  As he patted his face with a warm towel, the television gathered his ears’ attention. He took his shirt off and made his way to the front of the room.

  Then he rushed to the bed, grabbed the remote, and turned the volume up, and listened to the female reporter on the scene.

  ...To repeat, once again, police can confirm the victim. 26 year old Richard Quinn, known to all his friends as Ricky, was found dead in his home earlier this evening…

  Ricky’s picture appeared on the screen and Terry sat down on the edge of the bed. His eyes widened and his face went pale.

  ...While details are scarce at the moment, a report that I was just handed states that the body has what appear to be severe bite marks, intense bruising around the arms and waist, and a laceration on the throat…

  Terry fell to his back and sprawled across the bed with his arm stretched across his forehead. Even though Ricky had been annoying to work on and a complete jerk to him, Terry still couldn’t believe he had died, hours after being in the shop.

  He didn’t get much sleep.

  ***

  The next day at Ace of Spades, Terry tattooed his best friend, Robb. It was hard for him to concentrate while thinking about Ricky, but he didn’t speak of it out loud.

  “You and Amanda are still coming tonight, right?” Robb asked.

  “Yeah, dude. Of course.”

  Terry reached over and took a sip of his coffee. He stepped on the tattoo machine and revved it up with a couple of buzzes, leaned in, and continued to fill in the tattoo.

  This was the second session on this piece with Robb. Terry had used the first to do the outline since it was an intricate, custom piece that he had drawn up to paint on his back. The tattoo showed a gunslinger being hanged in the middle of an 1800’s western town. A woman stood before the gunslinger with her hair blowing in the wind and her arm wrapped around their son. The rest of the town was empty. It was Terry’s favorite work that he had produced in a while. Tattooing the back meant that he was able to be very detailed and open up his creativity much more.

  “I’m starting on Amanda’s back this weekend,” Terry said.

  “Hell yeah, man. That’s gonna be such a bad ass tattoo.” Robb tipped his bottle of ale into his mouth. “How is this one lookin’?”

  Terry snickered and shook his head. “Can’t believe you’re drinking this early. Besides, you’re just bleeding more.”

  “Scared of a little blood? Pussy.” Robb smiled.

  “Fuck you,” Terry said through a grin. “Ya know, it’s not too late for me to draw this cowboy’s dick floppin’ between his legs, right?”

  They both laughed.

  Bells rang off the glass door at the front of the shop. Terry barely heard it over the music blasting in his booth and didn’t bother to break his concentration to look at who entered the building.

  A few moments later, Josh—one of the shop’s other artists—showed up at the open doorway to Terry’s booth.

  “Terry, you have a couple of men here to see you.”
Josh’s eyes got big, signaling to Terry that it was important.

  Two policemen stood at the door and Terry put his tattoo machine down. He reached over and turned the music off. Took a sip of his coffee.

  “You Terry Russell?” one of the cops said.

  “Yeah. How can I help you?”

  Robb gave Terry a puzzled look.

  The other cop, a well-built man with broad shoulders, looked to Terry.

  “Did you tattoo a Ricky Quinn here yesterday?”

  Terry swallowed his throat.

  “Yeah. He and a buddy of his were here.”

  The first cop—Terry saw that his nameplate said Easton—pulled out a pen and a notepad.

  “Not sure if you heard or not,” Easton began, “but Ricky was found dead last night.”

  “I saw it on the news,” Terry replied.

  “We were hoping that we could maybe step outside and have a few words with you. Just ask you a few questions.”

  Terry removed the latex gloves from his hands and stood. Followed the men outside to the front of the shop.

  When they got out there, Terry pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “You mind?” asked Terry.

  Labarbara, the second officer, reached out to ask for a cigarette. Terry pointed the top of the pack to him and Labarbara slid one out. Terry flicked his lighter and raised it to Labarbara’s face. The officer inhaled as the end of the cigarette lit like the sun.

  “Thanks,” Labarbara said, inhaling the cigarette and pushing the smoke out of his lungs into the air. “I’m Lieutenant Labarbara. This is Lieutenant Easton. We’re just trying to work backwards and gather as much information as we can.”

  Terry lit his own cigarette and inhaled, allowing the toxins to calm his heightened nerves.

  “I’ll do my best. Not sure that I can help you too much.”