Unholyverse

I Have been All Things Unholy-Part 1

"You know what it is," Frank said, watching Luke prep his needle. "What it is, is that God hates me."

"God gave you food poisoning?"

Frank shrugged, and felt the cracked leather of the chair scraping through his shirt. "Why not?"

Luke rolled his stool closer to Frank and shifted his cigarette over to the other side of his mouth without touching it, a weird, practiced little movement that made his grey-stubbled chin ripple. "Maybe he has more important shit to do than curse your guts, you ever think of that?"

"He's got more important shit to do than taking care of my fucking life, that's for damn sure."

The food poisoning, as Frank had already explained to Luke, was just the start of it. If he hadn't had food poisoning, he wouldn't have had to take time off work, and he wouldn't have gotten two messages from Brian talking about how disappointed he was that Frank hadn't taken their discussion about his absenteeism seriously, and he wouldn't have forced himself back into work early, and he wouldn't have had to run off in the middle of piercing Darren Haywood's scrotum to throw up, and Darren Haywood's lawyers wouldn't have sent Brian a nice letter to say they were being slapped with a lawsuit because Darren Haywood's pierced scrotum had ballooned with infection and was apparently leaking pus.

"I mean, I washed my fucking hands," Frank said now, watching Luke wipe alcohol over the back of Frank's hand. "I wasn't piercing the guy's balls with my tongue, you know what I'm saying?"

Luke nodded. Ash dropped onto the floor, some of it getting caught in Luke's raggy long hair. "I hear you, brother."

"Anyway, today I kind of lost my shit at work." Luke turned on the light over the chair and Frank closed his eyes against it. Luke's hand covered his own and rested there for a second, an odd, intimate gesture that felt kind of weird but sort of comforting at the same time. "Brian was on my case again, and I fucking love that place, you know, I put my heart and fucking soul into it, and he thinks I'm faking to get out of work. I mean, the fucker knew I had shitty health when he hired me, I don't know what the fuck he wants me to do."

Luke hummed, and Frank felt the wet nib of a Sharpie start to trace over his knuckles.

"So answer me this," Luke said as he drew. "If you work in the business, what the fuck are you doing out here getting a tattoo from a stranger? Your boys won't be pissed you went looking outside the fold?"

Frank had thought about that, when he found himself standing outside Luke's shop, staring in through the window and already feeling the phantom pain of the needle in his skin. Bob hated it when his clients went elsewhere, Frank knew, and this probably wouldn't do anything to help Frank's Get Bob to Teach me to Tattoo campaign, which was mostly him asking Bob over and over and over to teach him, and Bob putting him off. This was just going to earn him a lecture about not understanding the sanctity of the relationship between artist and client, Frank could tell, but he'd come home from work, still sore from his dressing-down from Brian, and yet another brush-off from Bob, and found his door broken down and his guitar and TV fucking gone, and worst of all, Ella was missing and probably dead under a bus somewhere.

Luke narrowed his eyes. "Ella?"

"My dog," Frank clarified. "So I went looking for her, and I thought I saw her so I left my car on the corner and went looking in this fucking alleyway, you know the kind you see on TV with the dumpsters and the dead end and probably a fucking corpse hidden under all the trash bags?" Frank shifted in the chair.

"Don't move," Luke told him, the Sharpie still moving over Frank's hand.

"Sorry," said Frank. "Anyway there was no dog, I don't know what the fuck I thought I saw, but when I came back my fucking car was getting towed, so I had to fucking walk and I don't know this neighborhood anyway, and I found myself outside this place, and I just thought, I don't know. Tattoos make me feel better."

That wasn't the whole truth. Frank had been trudging down the street with his useless wet collar pulled up tight around his face, his mind a constant loop of Brian's disappointed face and Ella, dead under a variety of vehicles, and the letter he'd gotten from Medicaid explaining why they couldn't help him, again, and his Mom's offer for him to move back home until he got himself back on his feet, and all of a sudden he'd looked up and seen the words, outlined in flickering, buzzing neon like a sleazy sign from above: TATTOO.

And she'd been right there in the window, on a piece of yellowing paper tacked up high in the corner, getting drowned out by all the Celtic symbols and sexy she-devils, her blank face and soft feathers so different from anything Frank had ever seen, and Frank had thought, I know you and felt a tug in his belly, like a fishhook embedded under his navel, a pull towards the surface, and he was stepping through the door before he even knew what he was doing.

He didn't want to tell Luke that, though. He'd already spilled his guts to the guy. It was so weird - Frank was a chatterbox, there was no doubt about it, but he didn't usually go around laying his shitty weeks out for total strangers to see.

And he felt at home in tattoo parlors, he always had. The smell, that sharp, wet scent of ink, and the way the pictures on the wall and ceilings made it seem smaller than it was, a bolt hole, cozy somehow. This old guy, grey and torn-looking like he'd come from a long fight, had ambled out from the back of the shop in a leather fucking vest, of all things, work all up and down his arms and across the sliver of chest Frank could see, and the guy had a weird way of looking at you, like he was seeing something you were trying to keep a secret.

"I want the girl with the wings," Frank said, shifting on his feet, suddenly aware of the wet footprints he was leaving all over the guy's floor. And as if blurting that out wasn't weird enough, he'd then found himself volunteering, "I'm Frank. I don't have an appointment."

There was a silence, during which Frank had time to get hold of his senses a little and start to stutter out something about a mistake and needing directions, but then the guy had just held out his hand, though, and said, "Luke. Come on over, brother, I can see you right."

Back in the present, Frank felt Luke's hand on him again, this time sweeping from his elbow to his wrist. His fingers were rough and his palm was warm, and there was a strange smell in the air, like the smell of dirt under a wet rock, and Frank wanted to open his eyes, he should check the outline Luke had drawn, make sure it was right, but Luke said, "Easy, easy, it'll go better if you're quiet," and that was the last thing Frank knew for a while.

When he woke up - woke up, who the hell fell asleep during a tattoo? Frank was comfortable with the process, but it was still a fucking needle in his flesh - Luke was wiping Frank's throbbing hand off with a rag.

"Shit," Frank said thickly, struggling with his sleep-stupid tongue. "Fuck, man, I'm sorry. That never happened to me before."

Luke laughed, a hoarse creak that didn't sound like it got that many outings. "Don't worry about it. You want to check her out?"

"Yeah, shit." Frank got upright and leaned over his hand. "Oh, dude. She's beautiful."

It was the wings Frank had liked, her tattered wings, one out to each side and two stretched out above her head. Two more twined downwards, like legs - she was like a woman, Frank thought, a woman laying back on a bed before - no, after sex, everything on display except there was no body, just the wings, just the wings and her face, which was sad somehow, despite not actually having any features, sad and beautiful.

She was just as good as she'd looked in the window. Better, because now she was Frank's.