Prompt: Finally, you've managed to gather the courage to get yourself a tattoo. What you didn't expect, however, was that it would grant you the ability to see creatures no one else can see but you.
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I am never letting Ari rope me into any of his schemes again.
The cat-scratch feeling of getting the very illegal tattoo hasn't quite faded by the time we leave, which is probably a bad sign... but I'm seventeen. It's the whole reason it's illegal for me to have this thing. I have no idea what it's meant to feel like.
"So, was it really that bad?"
"Yes."
Ari laughs, digging his elbow into my side. "It wasn't. Can't have been, you weren't screaming."
"What's the catch, then?" And there is one. There has to be one, because Ari hates me, and Kieran would have his head if I ever brought this up -- he wouldn't risk that without good reason. "Ari, for God's sake, what's the catch?"
"You'll see," he says cryptically, and then vanishes in that way he usually does. I'm still not sure if it's magic or knowing these streets far better than I do.
I don't entirely remember agreeing to this.
It's not even subtle. Apparently it just had to be somewhere where everyone will see it if I'm not wearing a jumper, and I don't know what kind of excuse I'd be able to give. The design means nothing to me, because Ari half chose it and half made it up on the spot (an eye surrounded by symbols I can't quite identify), so it's not even me breaking the law to get something meaningful. I'd probably have picked something bird-related if I really had the choice.
Well. I'll get an absolute earful when I get home, no doubt about that. But I also don't really want to be hanging around here for any longer than necessary. So I start walking.
That's how the trouble usually starts around here.
It's when I'm walking past the rotting building (still haven't worked out what's going on there, though something tells me it's Ari's fault) when the catch becomes very clear. I see the ghost first, of course, because I'm used to ghosts, but the fact that the silvery figure that rushes past me is definitely not human is... well, far more unusual. You don't get many animal ghosts following mediums for one simple reason – they can't communicate with them.
The bigger problem becomes clear a grand total of two seconds later, when teeth latch onto my wrist. With an extremely loud scream, I shake the thing off, and catch a glimpse of something that looks a lot like the rotting corpse of a dog darting back into the alley.
"Are you alright?"
I'm not quite stupid enough to ask whether they mean my wrist or my general sanity. Although my wrist definitely is bleeding. They don't sound scared enough of the weird zombie-dog's existence, so that suggests the same thing's going on here as with the ghosts. Nobody else can see them. So nobody else can see these... creatures.
Of course, I'm fairly used to seeing things that other people can't. It's just that I've never seen monsters like this. Or even any monsters, per se, though I guess ghosts would usually count.
"I'm... fine." What kind of excuse can you give for screaming at the top of your lungs when it doesn't look like you have a reason to do so? I must look crazy. "Overactive imagination, that's all."
Somehow, that sounded way worse than saying nothing.
When the stranger moves away, looking like they regret worrying, I can't walk away from the building fast enough. If this has anything to do with the fact that the bricks of it are rotting away, I don't think staying here is a good idea.
I should call Kieran.
But at the same time... I probably shouldn't.
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