Tattoo

by J G Alva

  TATTOO

  BY JG ALVA

  Chiaroscuro n (pl –os) 1) pictorial representation in terms of light and shade. 2) the arrangement or treatment of light and shade in a painting.

  One only gets some peace after one has accomplished something.

  -Vincent Van Gogh

  Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

  -Thomas Man

  CHAPTER 1

  Guy finished the tattoo and sat back to admire his work.

  It was good. Perhaps the best he had ever done. He felt that warm glow of pride, of accomplishment, envelope him. The desk lamp bent over his shoulder punched a bright beam of light into the dimness of the room, his hand in it, his creative hand, wrought in stark relief, each vein a raised blue-green worm, each tendon a puppet string, each knuckle a knot of bone pushing out against the skin. He could feel wonder at the workings of himself, at the eternal mechanism under his skin, the heart, the bones, the blood perpetually coursing through his system, and wonder that at every moment it could stop…but did not.

  The light also fell on the tattoo, and to this he felt a lesser, but warmer, awe.

  This, after all, was his creation, not someone else’s.

  He got up from his chair and stood back even further, in part to see the tattoo in its frame on that skin, in part because he was bursting with energy at the pleasure of his work, and not to move was to explode with it.

  On her arm it seemed to glow, like a talisman. Oh, but it was good. She had a good arm too, good enough to carry it, golden honey skin that was a direct contrast to the hard black lines of his design.

  He had a bad moment of almost-panic trying to remember the girl’s name. What had it been? Something like Sarah, but not Sarah. Was it Sandra? Something beginning with an S, he was sure.

  It was always so difficult to remember who they were once he’d removed their heads.

  *

  Guy knew he was different.

  He knew it from an early age, from playing with other kids and understanding almost from the beginning that he did not see the world as they did, that either the receptors in his brain were wired differently or he was gifted with insight and understanding beyond his years. What did it matter what the reason was? The effect was the same.

  And loneliness was the price he paid for this elevation.

  When he was five, three children caught him trying to open a dog’s skull with a stone. He couldn’t remember why he had done it, what had motivated him to do so. In this, his ascension to killer was much like evolution, inevitable, destined, but ultimately mysterious. How baffled he had been when the children had run away screaming.

  What had they been afraid of, he had wondered.

  Didn’t they know that this felt like the best thing in the world?

  Well. He supposed he couldn’t have expected them to understand.

  But it was a valuable lesson, and he learnt from then on to hide those parts of himself that did not conform, those insights and actions that would be frowned upon by those who followed the rules of society, and were chained by it.

  If he could not share these pleasures, then that was just another facet of his aloneness. The hardest part, he had found, to reconcile.

  He often wondered about the difference in him, wondered if he was better or worse off than everyone else. He was more, that was obvious, but was his life any better for it? He’d decided it was kind of a fifty-fifty thing. He didn’t have to follow those regimented rules of modern social behaviour that everyone else did, he was free, but he was also punished when he didn’t follow those rules.

  Or more accurately, when he got caught.

  Like now.

  He was on the edge of breaking those rules once again.

  From his white nondescript Ford Transit Van he was watching her flat, a pleasant enough place on the western end of the row of Victorian four storey houses that had been chopped up into flats and bordered Victoria Square on three sides.

  Waiting for some sign of her.

  It was getting late, and if she didn’t appear by the time it got dark then he knew he would have to move, lest he draw suspicious interest from her neighbours.

  Not that suspicious interest was something that overly concerned him. He was hardly memorable. He was tall at six foot seven, but in his van nobody could take note of his height. He had short cut blonde hair, small eyes, an average nose, no tattoos – should an absence of the branding on himself he so enthusiastically laid upon his victims be hypocritical? he didn’t think so – nothing to discern him from the general populous. He was just another guy in a white van, making a delivery.

  Of course, he wasn’t here to deliver anything, but to collect.

  Her name was Andrea.

  Slim, blonde, beautiful, he had seen her by chance on one of his many walks around Clifton; she had been eating her lunch on a park bench in the small patch of green grassland that ran the length of Caledonia Place and West Mall and ended at The Mall. He had followed her to where she worked, a small estate agent at the northern end of that cobblestone street, had waited until she was finished, and then had followed her here, to her home.

  That had been three nights ago, and he had been coming back here every night since for the chance to grab her.

  Just like that other one – Sandra? – she would wear his next tattoo very well.

  *

  When windows began bursting into illumination all around Victoria Square like Christmas tree lights, he went back to where he kept them, to where he kept all those aspects of his secret life. His studio.

  Being once again confronted by the girl’s decapitated corpse propped in the old dentist’s chair he used to brace his victims for his art, her name suddenly popped into his head, and he laughed with delight: Susan. Susan Bell. Ding-dong. How could he have forgotten? He laughed, and almost without conscious control of it, his laugh turned into a crow, ecstatic and unfettered, here in this place where he felt no need to guard himself against mistakes, where he could be free…and the crow was much like one of the lost boys in Peter Pan, those children who displayed ultimate freedom.

  He was flying.

  But there was more to this feeling, a deeper dimension.

  It was almost as if he felt…he didn’t know…useful.

  Almost three weeks ago he had embarked on what he now privately thought of as The Play. It seemed a fitting title, in that there were acts, and it was a game, of sorts. It was the ultimate display of his talents, of everything he was…and also a challenge to those who did not understand, and as such bestowed upon him their patronisation.

  His only regret was that he had not devised the concept sooner. Now, with hindsight, his killings before had all been so meaningless. Yes, there was pleasure to be had, and the much needed release of whatever store of energy that was dammed within him in the interim between killings.

  But The Play fulfilled him on a cerebral level. He had never been this occupied, and certainly not as pleasantly.

  He had a plan. He had never done that before, and it struck him that he should have, from the very beginning.

  See: he was even clever enough to make himself feel foolish sometimes.

  *

  What he didn’t enjoy was moving the bodies.

  It was integral to The Play, but he wished he could employ some sort of labour to attend to it. Like removal men, or something. It was too menial a task for his creativity, his intellect.

  Quite frankly, it was beneath him.

  He laid the clear plastic sheet on the uneven floor and then, picking up Susan, hefted her with some difficulty toward it.

  At the last moment she slipped from his grasp.


  He tried to catch her before she could hit the ground, but she slipped through his fingers…and in the ensuing tumble, as he shifted to catch her, he lost his centre of gravity, and after a precarious second, she brought him down with her, so that he came face to face with the stump of her neck.

  It was a clean cut, but a tangled mess of tissue packed into that small diameter seemed ready to burst from its casing, like an over packed tortilla wrap.

  And she was on the fucking dirt. Damn it. Now he’d have to wash her again.

  It was okay, he could do it on the sheeting.

  Moving to her left side, he squatted down and got his hands under her, and then tensing himself for the effort, rolled her toward the clear plastic sheeting. She started picking up bits, like a snowball, small stones and dirt sticking to her cold skin. The forensic investigators would have a field day.

  It took four turns before she was fully on the plastic sheet.

  He stood, breathing heavily, and stared down at the body.

  She wasn’t tiny, but the thin wrists and the smallness of her waist gave an impression of delicacy. She was a woman in good shape. Her pubic hair was a shade darker than the hair on her head, a small line of it running down to between her legs.

  She had died very quietly, just sobbing really.

  Resigned.

  He got more than just turned on, looking at her. He became almost…ravenous.

  But he couldn’t allow himself to do anything. Wouldn’t. Forensics would have a field day with that too.

  Moving away with difficulty, almost as if she was a magnet exerting force on him, he turned to the jet wash system against the back wall.

  He had bought it at a bargain price from an old delivery company depot in Fishponds that had filed for bankruptcy.

  Plumbing it in had been something else. Of course he had to do it himself. It would not be something he could explain.

  He lifted the nozzle out of its holder, and then freed up the tube with a tug. He made sure the power was on and then moved back toward the girl, allowing himself one last look before he was to begin spraying.

  But if he was going to spray her anyway…

  Getting down on his knees, he unbuckled his belt, freed his already erect penis, and began masturbating.

  When he came back to himself, he found that he was biting her cold breast.

  Oh dear. Got carried away there.

  Releasing her, the impressions of his teeth remained, like a finger pressed into clay.

  His heart banging loudly in his ears, he zipped himself up and went over to the work bench for some tissues.

  He wiped most of himself off her, and then feeling lazy and content, he turned the jet wash on, and began to hose her down.

  *

  He kept a diary.

  He always had. It was a way to make sense of things, to unburden himself, but it was also something on which he could mark down his accomplishments. He knew, if found, that it would undo him, but that was partly the point: few who commit their innermost thoughts to paper do so only for their own counsel. At some time they expect to be discovered, and the knowledge of such an impending discovery is like a balm against a wound. He believed that, being found out, having the list of his sins laid bare, would be the ultimate freedom. You are known, and being known was perhaps the only thing that would banish his loneliness.

  He wished only to share who he was for that end. But the question remained, who would he share himself with?

  Ultimately, who would understand him?

  He did not know. Only that he hoped some day it would be read by someone. Be studied. Be examined.

  So he wrote:

  Last night I dreamt that a twelve year old boy was eating my mother out. In the dream, I went into a rage and attacked him. As I was beating him, I looked over and saw my mother fingering herself. When I woke up, I had a hard on.

  He took the diary with him wherever he went, and he closed it and gathered it up now, holding it comfortably in his hand.

  Susan was in the other room, waiting for him. Waiting to be used in the next part of The Play.

  He had to hurry.

  He began making his way back toward his work room when he heard the voice from the other; it wound its way down each passageway, as if seeking him out; a sweet aching contralto:

  “Please, please, I’ll do anything, anything, I’ll just, just…just let me out, please…”

  It was dim in this part of his Grandfather’s place, but he could easily make out Helen’s scared face behind the bars of her cell. She was smaller than Susan, much smaller, a tiny little stick thin blonde with large blue eyes. She reminded him of someone in that moment, but the memory of who it might be quickly vanished as she began beseeching him.

  “You want to have sex?” She said desperately. “You want to fuck me? I’ll do it. I won’t even complain. I’ll like it. You want a blow job? I’ll give you the best blow job you’ve ever had. But you’ve got to promise to let me out of here. Okay? Just promise me that you’ll let me go and I’ll…I’ll…I’ll let you do everything to me. Everything you want. I promise.”

  Guy hung his head, mainly to stop her from seeing how her words had embarrassed him. He could feel his face heating up. He didn’t want her to talk like that. It seemed wrong, coming out of that tiny, delicate, child-like mouth.

  He had never been good with girls.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a croaked whisper, and he cleared his throat, spoke louder. The embarrassment was leaking away. “It’s alright. It’ll be over soon.”

  Her eyes bore into him, but she didn’t say anything else, and he didn’t know what else to say to her, he couldn’t talk to her, he didn’t know how, so he nodded once to her and went on his way again.

  Uncomfortable thinking about what she had said, instead he turned his mind to how he might kill her; he immediately felt he was on much safer ground. The first one, Victoria, he had used the Repeater on. That had been something else. The knives hadn’t gone particularly deep – the machine precluded it, a design fault he would have to rectify – but she had screamed so loud his ears had rung for hours afterward.

  He hadn’t used anything on Susan. There was the Boomcutter, and he had been tempted, but in the end he was too worried about tearing up that beautiful skin to want to expose her to that.

  But for Helen?

  He didn’t know. He’d have to think about it.

  Maybe pour acid down her throat to wash her fucking mouth out. God, she was as bad as his mother.

  He liked that idea, but knew he wouldn’t do it.

  Not cerebral enough.

  Oh well. He had time.

  *

  He was back again on Victoria Square, waiting for her.

  It wasn’t particularly warm inside his van. Through the walkway that led to the Village, the small trickle of people coming in to the Square were bundled up in coats and huddled against the chill wind. The trees in the Victoria Square garden, big hundred year old Silver Birches and the like, seemed too to huddle themselves against it, as if their bark was skin and the wind’s cold touch was abrasive

  He noticed another white delivery van not too far away from where he was parked, and saw the driver hefting a big square box – a television? – into the building directly beside the alley that connected the Square to the Village.

  It was just getting dark. Now would be a good time, if she was coming.

  And then, as if his thought had conjured her into reality for his pleasure, she appeared.

  Andrea.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Robin, I really don’t know what else to do.”

  A guard appeared behind the glass front doors of the City Museum and Art Gallery on Queen’s Road, a baroque building built at the turn of the century, and looked a question at them. Beside Robin, Sean gave an irritated shuffle of his shoulders and dug in his pocket.

  “I’m with the MCIU, the Major Crime Investigation
Unit,” he said loudly to the guard behind the glass. He held his identification up. “My name is Sean Bocksham. I called earlier?”

  The guard nodded and from a bundle of keys, selected one and let them in.

  “You’re here to see Maura?” The guard asked, and Robin saw the once-over he gave her. She stared at him, and he at least had the good manners to turn away, locking the door behind them.

  “Yes. Where is she?”

  “I’ll take you. Follow me.”

  Sean had not missed the look; he glanced at her, checking her, and when she gave a shake of her head he nodded, and they both fell in step behind the guard.

  It was late, and except for emergency lighting the museum was dark. Robin had lived in Bristol all her life but she had never been here before, and the place was foreign and strange to her, stranger still in this muted half-light. It was late on a Sunday night, long passed closing time, and beside the sounds of their passage the building was quiet. They mounted the steps in the lobby behind the guard, and then passed through another set of doors into a large open space, a square about sixty feet across. This too was shrouded in darkness, but she could make out two balconies overhead, and the dim shape of an old style aeroplane hanging from the ceiling on wires. There were marble figures at points along the walls, and they seemed to watch. The reception desk sat silent and empty on her left, next to the entrance to the Natural History section. On the other side of the room she could see the entrance to the Egyptian Exhibit. The sound of their shoes on the marble floor echoed loudly in that great space.

  “What do you know about him?” She asked, pitching her voice low so that the guard, some paces in front of them, could not hear her. He was leading them toward a large marble staircase at the back of the room. “I mean, really? What do you know?”

  Sean sighed quietly.

  “He’s rich. Sort of. Is in his late thirties, is unmarried, has no siblings. His mother died in some terrible boating accident when he was young, I mean, really young, like, when he was about nine or something. His father was in the army and spent a lot of time moving them around; I think I read that he spent most of his childhood in Spain.” Sean paused, thinking. “He paints. He has a degree in Fine Art.” Sean shrugged. “And he does stuff like this.”