TATTOO PARLOR | daniel howell

o n e

~{A week later}~

I peeled off my blue latex gloves from my sweaty hand, throwing them in the garbage. I had just finished giving an eighteen year old a tattoo with an 'x' on his wrist, as his friends all had the same. Before the last boy could get his, they ran off.

The sun was blazing in through the giant window, causing sweat beads to roll off the side of my face as I worked. My friend Mark had just ended his shift, leaving my least favorite person, Creatia, to take the next shift.

I hated her so much.

She was always so annoying, and would talk nonstop to me while I was trying to work on a tattoo. It took so much energy to not kill her.

The door opened and a woman walked up to the counter. She had her brown hair in a pixie cut, and was wearing ripped black skinny jeans matched with a dark red t-shirt on. How was she not dying of heat stroke? The world may never know.

"Hi, can I get a rose tattoo? I have a picture for reference." She handed my other friend, James, a photo.

James ushered me over to give me the photo, and I copied the design on a sheet of see-through paper and she laid back in the chair. As I put on a new pair of blue latex gloves, I asked her where she wanted it and she pointed to her arm.

I pressed the sheet of paper onto her forearm and held it down before peeling it off. The blue ink was very visible. I proceeded with the tattoo.

At this point, it was starting to get very stressful, as the design was hard to copy. Creatia was no help whatsoever. As I was working on this particularly difficult design, Creatia was non stop talking about the weather.

"And it's like really hot outside! Can you believe it? I don't get how people like the summer, because it's way too hot! Personally, my favorite season is-" she rambled on and on before I finally had snapped. I was about to say something, but the women I was giving the tattoo to apparently had enough as well.

"Oh, my god! Can you shut up? It's taking all my effort to stay still so my tattoo artist doesn't mess up, and you continuously talking isn't helping me. And I bet the tattoo artist has had enough too, because she has to spend every damn day with you. So, be quiet." She snapped at Creatia. I leaned down next to her face and whispered so no one else but her would hear.

"Thank you so much for saying that." She turned to me and smiled.
"It was the least I could do." She whispered back to me. I continued the tattoo until it was time to wrap and bandage it in the plastic covering to make sure the area of skin is completely sterile and free from bacteria that could harm the healing skin and cause nasty infections.