Devil's Soul

Chapter 12 (here's what else I needed to know about being a demon)

***This chapter is dedicated to SantaCruzFan for abundantly commenting on this story and for being a devoted supporter of everything I write!***

What is your opinion on tattoos? I had a friend in high school that seemed to have been planning her tattoo since her birth. Her name was Tiffany. She liked to show people where she would get it and describe what it would be. The problem was that she had eighteen years to plan before she was allowed to get one, and there’s only so much thought that can go into a tattoo. The result was that she was constantly changing her mind about where it would go and what it would be. To her, every new idea that sprang into her mind was truly the perfect idea. She didn’t seem capable of recognizing the endless cycle she was stuck in, that in a couple of weeks her precious perfect idea would be discarded for a new one.

You see, for Tiffany, it didn’t matter what kind of tattoo she got or where it went. She just wanted one for the sake of having one. Do you want to know what she got? You’re going to be disappointed. She got the Chinese symbol for “hope” on the back of her right shoulder. When I asked her why, she shrugged and told me that it looked cooler than the symbol for “strength.”

I never verified this, but I always had the sneaking suspicion that the tattoo artist hadn’t been honest about what the Chinese character really meant. He could have easily gotten away with it because Tiffany couldn’t read Chinese characters.

But I was probably just being cynical because Tiffany’s treatment of tattoos went completely against my own beliefs. I have nothing against tattoos. I just think that they need to mean something, something more than “hope.” They need to hold personal significance to the bearer. That tattoo should remind you of something incredibly important in your life every time you see it.

Not everyone has something that important in their life. I don’t think Tiffany did. That’s why she was so lost in trying to decide what to put on her body. Plus, she was going about it all wrong. The important thing should appear in your life, first. Then, you can decide to get a tattoo of it. If you first decide to get a tattoo, and then try to seek out something important to be symbolized by that tattoo, you will never find something that is satisfactory.

Of course, Tiffany seemed perfectly happy with her Chinese tattoo, so I guess it’s all just a matter of personal preference. I would not have been satisfied with something that simply looked cool.

As you can see, I have put a lot of thought into how I feel about tattoos. It’s a big decision to get one.

Looking back, I think I would have been a lot happier if I had agreed with Tiffany’s viewpoint that tattoos are just something cool to look at. It turns out that getting a tattoo wasn’t my decision to make. If I had been like Tiffany, I wouldn’t have minded. Who cares, if all tattoos are equal, right? But, no, I always have to go and see the meaning behind everything. This one definitely holds personal significance for me, but it is not something that I want to be reminded of every day. Or ever.

I guess the good news is that the tattoo is located on the back of my neck, which means I can avoid seeing it or letting other people see it if I want to. Unfortunately, this is also why I took so long to notice it was there. I say this is unfortunate not because I would have liked to be burdened with the knowledge of its existence sooner, but because if I had known about it sooner, I would have been able to prevent my mom from being the one to discover it.

My mom agreed with neither me nor Tiffany about tattoos (not that I ever let her meet Tiffany). She disliked them completely. She thought they were a sign of rebellion. My mom spent all of my teenage years waiting for the rebel child to emerge. When I turned eighteen, she thought for sure that I would come home with tattoos all over my face. It took a long time to convince her that I didn’t have a tattoo in a more concealed area. She could have resolved the issue by demanding to examine my body, but she wasn’t that unreasonable.

My mom loved me, and it’s not that she didn’t trust me. It’s more like she didn’t trust the environment I grew up in. She knew we didn’t live in the best neighborhood and that I didn’t attend the best school. She thought it was only a matter of time until the negative influences rubbed off on me. She lived with that paranoia until the day I got accepted into MIT.

But I think all that paranoia came crashing back the moment she caught sight of my tattoo. It happened when Abhinav, Chung, and I were doing yoga in my living room. 

Mr. Bajaj had decided that my yoga and meditation skills were now good enough where I only needed to see him every other day, as long as I promised to practice at home on the off days. I wasn’t about to let Abhinav and Chung off the hook, so I made them practice with me in my apartment. I think my mom was glad to have the company. Her mood had improved the moment I told her we would be doing yoga at home tonight.

So there we were, innocently transitioning from child’s pose to downward dog, when my mom shrieked. You see, unbeknownst to me, there was a tattoo on the back of my neck of a reversed pentagram, with the two points facing upward, except at the moment they were facing downward. As soon as I had gone into downward dog, the hair had fallen away from the back of my neck, exposing the tattoo for my mom to discover, as she was walking by with a basket of freshly folded laundry.

That laundry didn’t remain folded for long because as soon as she saw the atrocity on my neck, she forgot all about the basket, and it tumbled right out of her arms. I didn’t actually see this happen because I was upside down and facing away from her, but when I came out of the position to see what the matter was, I saw the laundry spilled all over the floor and was able to deduce what had happened.

Unfortunately, I was not able to deduce what the source of her anguish was, and this took me a bit of time to figure out.

“You Devil child!” she shouted at me, and at first I thought she must have caught sight of my demon eyes, but that wasn’t possible because my eyes were fully human at the moment. “How long have you been hiding that tattoo from me?!” she questioned.

This one threw me for a loop because at the time I had no idea what she was talking about. “What tattoo?” I asked, and this only made my mom angrier, as she thought I was trying to play her for a fool.

One of the guys behind me moved my hair out of the way.

“Um, Mavis?” Chung whispered, “You do have a tattoo. It’s on the back of your neck. It looks like the mark of the Devil.”

Well that was comforting to hear.

Abhinav laughed uncomfortably. “Don’t worry, Ms. Quinn. That’s just Sharpe!”

I wished he hadn’t said that. I could feel the tiniest bit of his soul float into me from the lie. I grinned way too broadly. “Yep! It’s just Sharpe! It was for uh…a physics thing that we did in class…” I faded off, hoping that my mom wouldn’t make me explain more. Lucky for me, my mom didn’t know the difference between physics and voodoo. It was all witchcraft to her. Not that she actually believed in witchcraft. I just mean that she didn’t know anything about physics. Or voodoo, for that matter.

So disaster was averted, but it still wasn’t the most pleasant way to discover that I had the mark of the Devil tattooed on the back of my neck.