Reasonable Doubt ✔ | Open Novella Contest 2020 | Complete

Eight - Alex

It's almost a week until I hear from Sharron. Still, the paperwork is in motion, my move date set. I'll be spending a few weeks at Warren County jail. It will be a picnic compared to here.

Until then, I wait.

Colt's been going crazy without something to keep his hands busy. The time off work has seen him quizzing me on my GED stuff, doing manic amounts of exercise, and generally being a giant pain in my ass.

The only time I get alone is when he's out on the compound running his hustle. That diverse network of moving contraband and lord knows what. I'm impressed he had time for a job before the injury.

This morning, he pocketed something from Lawson to deliver to an inmate in C-Charlie. When he returns in the early afternoon, he's grinning ear to ear. "Let's make a tattoo gun."

I glance up from my work. "Right now?"

Colt slides the door shut. "Yeah. Finally got the cord I needed."

I hop off the top bunk. "Dare I ask?"

"Filched it from one of the floor buffers," he smirks. The stitches came out a little more than five days ago. Only the line through the eagle imagery on his forearm serve as a reminder. "C'mon."

He explains everything; the setup of the aperture, loading the spring and needle, pulling a motor from my hair clippers and attaching it to a spliced power cord and AA batteries. It doesn't look like any tattoo gun I've ever seen. Doesn't matter - the thing works.

The ink is...soot. Harvested from burned cotton and baby oil mixed with waterproof India ink nipped from education. It makes a denser consistency, Colt explains.

"You're sure you trust me to do this?" I clarify, dipping the needle into the basin. "It doesn't seem sanitary."

"It's not," he replies easily.

Right. No big deal. Not about to be shooting potentially hazardous material into your skin.

I run my thumb over the flesh, pink and freshly healed. I don't know much about tattooing, but I feel like a little more time should be had before I hit it.

When I tell him as much, he just shrugs. "It'll be fine."

"Did I mention I don't know what I'm doing?" I clarify again. There's a very real possibility I'll destroy the art he has. "You're putting an awful lot of trust in me."

In response, he taps the swirls of a feathered wing along his forearm. "Hit the lines again and work over the scar. That'll give you a guide."

Colt lays on the bed, head closest to the outlet the jerry-rigged set up pulls from. I hunch beside him, arm resting against his chest while I pull his skin, try and equate it to a piece of paper. Just when I'm about to put the buzzing needle to his arm, he pauses me.

"Hold up."

"Change your mind?" I ask, hopefully.

He laughs. "No. Here," he pulls a wad of gloves that were clearly taken from the infirmary and hands a pair to me. "Wear those."

"You'll put this shit under your skin, but you won't let me touch you with my bare hands?"

The smile is tight, doesn't quite touch his eyes. He adds what sounds like, "protect you from me" under his breath.

Once gloved, I start to work. The lines make for an easy template to follow. I dip, nick, wipe, and repeat. Eventually I learn the pressure, to mix the ink with water to create a gray wash. All between thirty-minute security rounds tracked with an alarm clock.