Creepypasta Presents:
The Hourglass Tattoo
March 14, 2019
by The Dead Canary
My friends and I were always trying to dare each other into doing stupid stuff. Generally, it involved us all getting super drunk, then making suggestions. If we all agreed somebody had to do something, they would have to do it…or they’d have to have a drink from “the Bottle.” The Bottle was a former bottle of vodka that now contained any sort of nasty, vile fluids that we collected over time. One sip was guaranteed to make anyone hurl.
Looking back on it now, my friends and I were dicks. But things definitely would have been better if I had just drank from the Bottle that night.
The night I’m talking about was the night I was chosen to get a tattoo…from the lowest-rated place Yelp had to offer. I never wanted a tattoo. Everyone else in our group had at least one, with Frank covered in the things, but I had always been a holdout. That was why I was chosen. Being super drunk, as I said, I was less willing to say no. It didn’t help that I was the last contributor to the Bottle and definitely didn’t want my lips anywhere near it.
It didn’t take long to find a place online. We had never seen a place get so many negative reviews and still be in business…without it being a trolling prank, anyway. These looked genuine, ranging from being stabbed with the needles to getting the wrong tattoo to getting a staph infection from leaning against a stain on the wall.
The guys thought it was perfect for me.
I’d never actually been to a business that had its front entrance come in from an alley, but this did. Everyone else waited back at my place while Frank drove me there, to make sure I did the deed right. He sat in the lobby with me until I was called back behind a yellow curtain.
The guy doing my tattoo looked like an ex-biker who had recently gotten into voodoo. He wore a bandanna on his head (probably to hide the fact that was going bald, most likely), a Killing Joke jean jacket (the band, not the Batman story), and had a beard long enough to hide gravy stains on his belt buckle. On the shelf behind him were a collection of painted skulls (those calavera ones from the Day of the Dead festivals) and vials filled with used needles, fresh needles, and at least a few shrunken heads. I hoped they were fakes, but they were really leathery looking.
He looked me over, and then pointed to a binder full of designs to pick from. I flipped through them, looking for anything unusual enough that I’d never seen it on anyone before, but not so lame that I’d regret my decision in the morning…though I was still drunk enough that I’d probably regret anything at this point.
I finally found one, towards the middle…an hourglass. A real Goth-looking hourglass, with spider webs and curled, pointy edges, very Tim Burton-looking. I gave it to the guy, pointed to the back of my neck (right where a nice business shirt would cover it up), and prepared myself.
It took three hours. It shouldn’t have taken three hours for something as small as I got, but it did. Every second the needle was running hurt, and hurt bad. But after sweating, swearing, and plotting revenge on all of my friends one by one, he said it was done. I thanked him, paid him (though the tip was certainly smaller than he probably expected), and went to go see Frank.
Frank, mad that he’d waited for so long, asked to see it on the way back to the car. I pulled back my shirt and angled my neck. “So, what do you think?”
He looked at it. “Christ, dude, I knew it had to be big, but wow, that’s commitment. I can’t believe you’d get something that disgusting and realistic looking.”
Disgusting? Realistic? Maybe he’d had more to drink in the lobby. It was a stupid hourglass; realistic I could buy, but disgusting?
We got in his car and started driving back. With my neck itching, I asked if he had a mirror in the car so I could take a look at it, maybe even rub some of that greasy lotion the artist gave me to keep it from drying out. He said there might be a signal mirror or something in the glove compartment; I checked, and he was right. I raised it up to look at my hourglass.
