Reaper's Touch

Gus: Stories

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies... something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die."
-Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Gus wasn't used to being around "norms", which was a term he and Lucas had come up with to refer to people who weren't addicts.

Ethan, the artist Gus was shadowing at work, was one of Jeff's ranch kids from way back and was now a successful tattoo artist. Gus could relate to his story so they'd developed a pretty quick bond. Ethan had been a seventeen-year-old pill popper when he'd met Jeff at the ranch, and when he'd aged out of the system months later, Jeff had given him his first tattooing job and a place to stay. The other two artists who worked at the shop knew Jeff from NA all the way back in the 90's. So norms weren't, well, the norm here.

Gus hoped he wasn't screwing things up with Bree, who was definitely a norm. She was eighteen, like him, but this was her first tattoo, and she was freaking out about telling her parents.

"Um... just don't tell them," Gus said simply, watching Ethan transfer his mermaid sketch onto Bree's luscious thigh.

"I can't do that!" Bree said, looking shocked.

"Or show them when you're thirty and say you just got it," Gus said.

"You're a horrible influence. Is he always this way?" Bree asked Ethan.

Ethan glanced at Gus and smiled. "I don't know. He doesn't influence me," he said.

"So I guess I'm just one of the unlucky few who isn't immune to your charms," Bree said.

"Don't feel bad. I'm pretty hard to resist."

"This is gonna hurt! Hold my hand!" Bree cried, whimpering even though the machine wasn't on yet.

"Not so fast. You can continue flirting later. First, check this out and let me know what you think," Ethan said, holding up a mirror. Bree glanced at the wet bluish transfer outline on her leg.

"Perfect!"

"Gus," Ethan said with a nod, and Gus hopped off the counter and started digging through the cabinets for the right colors to use in the tattoo. The ink came in little containers the size of pill bottles. Sometimes, if the client was cool with it, Ethan let him choose the color scheme. Tonight was one of those nights. He chose a combination of vivid purples, blues and greens for the mermaid and lined them all up starting with black. The outline always came first.

Bree screamed as soon as the needle touched her skin, and Ethan had to stop every few minutes so she could "recover." She was squeezing Gus's hand so hard he felt lightheaded.

"Look, this is gonna take all night. I charge by the hour, you know," Ethan finally said.

"Oh you do?" Bree asked, and after that she mysteriously developed a tolerance for the pain.

Ethan finished the tattoo a couple of hours later, but Gus had no intention of letting the night end.

He hadn't been with a girl since Mahaylia two years ago. Though he'd been trying with Hex, she didn't seem to be interested and he lacked the self-esteem to imagine that he had a chance with her.

But tonight, Bree was giving off very obvious signals that she was into him. Tonight, at last, he wouldn't have to be alone.

"When do you get off work?" Bree asked after she'd settled the bill with Ethan.

"I'm off now," Gus said. "Have been for two hours."

"So you stayed just to be with me?"

"Yup."