7th Circle Ink

Have you ever wanted to get a tattoo? Perhaps you’ve thought about wandering into one of the parlors scattered throughout the city? The right tattoo can be a beautiful expression of meaning and art, if you get it from the right place...

The flimsy glass shop door wretched open to the cacophonous shriek of tiny bells.

“You sir, are a god damned maniac,” Sam declared with tequila drenched boldness. I laughed at his solemn accusation as I followed him through the door, my own voice too loud against the sullen silence of a city street laying to rest.

“It’s not that crazy,” I protested, “you know I’ve been talking about getting one.”

“Oh sure,” Sam agreed sarcastically, “Most people have a couple shots and wander into the nearest tattoo parlor. I tell ya buddy, you got lucky with this place. That coulda been a whole lot worse.” I punched him.

“Where was this caution before I got the tattoo?” Sam’s eyes danced.

“And pass up the chance to see some fugly anime simpson on your ass cheek for the next decade? Not a chance.” I laughed at that.

“I’m not that drunk Sam.” He sighed

“Unfortunately.” But an eager smile soon crept through his facade.

“Alright, show it to me again.” I popped an eyebrow.

“Again? Didn’t you just watch me get it done for like an hour? Maybe you should think about getting your own.”

“I’m seriously considering it, now c’mon show it.” I smiled and rolled up my pant leg.

Glittering red eyes gazed back at us. A sneering mouth with too many teeth split its face as gnarled horns hooked over its head. Long tearing claws seemed to punch into the meat of my left calf. Sam whistled.

“Damn that is one mean looking demon!” I nodded, eyes pouring over the glistening rolls of its mottled skin. “Its so… lifelike, wow. How’d you know to pick this place?”

I tore my eyes away from the demon to glance back at the shop. 7th Circle Ink glowed redly above nondescript dirty brick. The dim light of the sign reaching out to us through the evening gloom only to puddle around our feet.

“I don’t know, it just kind of called to me.” We were silent for a moment, then Sam shrugged.

“Well, tequila will do that to you, so are you safe to drive or are we dropping 50 bucks on this Uber?”

“I’ll meet my make before I drop 50 bucks on an uber.” Sam laughed and we began to head back

. . .

I stumbled through my door with a clatter disturbing the cool silence of an empty one bedroom apartment. Grasping for a moment at the hallway light switch, dark silhouettes suddenly brightened into a series of second-hand furnishings, and I thrust the door closed behind me. Avoiding eye contact with a pile of dirty dishes I made a beeline for the bedroom, a fugue of exhaustion and oncoming sobriety lighting the path like an airport landing strip. I started to shed clothing upon entering, letting shoes and socks join their brothers strewn about the floor. I paused in the process of peeling off a pair of fashionable, but overly tight jeans, as the tattoo came into view.

The detail work was incredible, the mottled skin so vivid I could practically smell the malodorous scent of rotting flesh. I smiled as I angled my calf in the mirror. And the eyes! Glittering pools of hate, I practically expected them to… I blinked. The shriveled smile of the demon sneered at me. Had I just seen the tattoo blink?

“I-Impossible!” I laughed.

I stared at the demon. Nothing happened. I sighed, smiling,

“Man, I’m such an idiot, getting drunk and thinking my-” The tattoo blinked again.

I ripped my pants off and ran over to the mirror. I poured over every line of the design. No, it wasn’t blinking, the eyes were just half closed. Had they… always been half closed? Of course they had, this was pure idiocy. But that… grasping claw, was it… outstretched now? I was sure it had bent elbows before. If only I had a picture to compare it to… I turned to grab my phone out of my dropped pants and paused.

“Ok this is dumb, I’m taking a picture of my tattoo because I think, what - its… its moving or something? I laughed, too loudly.

“I have to get it together,” I took a deep breath and turned to my bed. I did not take a step.

“Ok, ok I’ll snap a pic so I can share it later and call it a night,” I smiled despite the twisting feeling in my gut. I bent over and yanked the phone out of the pocket of my fallen pants ignoring unread messages from Sam, snapped a pic without unlocking the phone, and tossed it to the far side of the bed. In one motion I stood, smashed off the light and lept under the covers breathing heavily.

As my breathing slowed I shook my head with an uncertain smile and rolled over to accept the welcoming dark of sleep.

KILL

I sat bolt upright in the dark, “What the hell was that!?”

Silence was my answer. I waited until the electricity in my veins faded and the dull weight of exhaustion pulled me back into bed, grimly aware that I would not sleep well that night.

. . .

The morning light found my body damp with cold sweat, jaw sore from clenched teeth. Visions of demons with razor teeth and hateful eyes had kept me tossing and turning through the night. I had seen myself plunging a shining knife into Sam’s chest as his eyes widened in horror, my own maniacal laughter filling my ears as the word

KILL

Reverberated in my bones.

I felt like puking and I wasn’t 100% sure it was from the hangover. I sighed and winced as I glanced up at the brightness bleeding through semi-closed blinds.

“Can’t stay in bed all day,” I twisted, tossing my feet over the side of the bed. I sat there for a moment, head bleary from the sudden movement, contemplating what on god’s green earth was worth leaving the warm comfort of my bed on a Saturday morning. I glanced casually, almost thoughtlessly at the reflection of my left calf in the closet mirror.

Bare skin greeted me. I froze. It wasn’t there.

There could’ve been a bottomless pit in my stomach.

“No…” my fears from last night, my nightmares all came into a sharp, sudden, focus. I stood on unsteady feet and walked over to the mirror. The scene didn’t suddenly change, my calf remained empty. The tattoo was gone.

“I-I’m not crazy. I DID get a tattoo last night.” I checked my other calf as if I’d somehow gotten my legs confused, but there was nothing. I shook my head struggling to process.

KILL

My heart was a bass drum thundering between my lungs. The awful twisted voice of my nightmares. The reverberating rasp as I had plunged a dagger over and over into Sam’s bloody chest. I had just heard it, and the sound had come from my left leg.

Slowly, I began to reach for the left leg of my boxer shorts. My fingertips quivered as they approached the wispy fabric, my breath escaped in ragged gasps. Finally, I latched onto the hem of the shorts. I took a deep breath. With a coroner's mournful regard I began to raise the silken cowl.

At first only my bare skin was visible. Then my blood turned to snowmelt. One rotten claw slithered into view, then another, then the entire putrid form was there emerging from my thigh a malignant sneering vision of my nightmare. A high pitched cry escaped my lips.

“Oh god, oh god it moved, it crawled up my leg in the night.” But it wasn’t over.

My insides shuddered and twisted while I watched as one grasping clawed hand unlatched from its position.

Slowly, so slowly, its arm began to extend, up and up and up. As it wormed its way through my skin fine hairs twisted, bowed, and collided announcing its progress with the sensation of spider’s legs crawling to an even more sensitive place.

I screamed fully then. A wordless gasp of horror and revulsion. My fingers scrabbled at it, raking red lines of pain across my skin that shed crimson tears of blood. But where I touched the creature I felt the pulsing, rippling warmth of its movement beneath my skin.

“OH GOD, STOP! Jesus stop, stop! Get out of my skin! GET OUT OF MY SKIN!” but the feeling of spiders legs crawling up my thigh continued, if anything faster than before.

KILL

The withered corrupt rasp echoed in my bones, reverberating in my skull and with it came visions of a shining knife like the brilliant tooth of some great terrible beast plunging down, and down into Sam’s chest over and over.

GET THE KNIFE AND KILL

The maniacal laughter from my dream was resounding in my ears. Loudly, even more loudly than I remembered and I realized it wasn’t from my dream. It was coming from me, erupting from my chest ecstatic and gleeful from the wondrous, beautiful vision of my kitchen knife plunging into Sam’s chest. And I wasn’t in my room anymore, I was in my kitchen reaching for the drawer. Yes, the drawer, the drawer where it was hidden, the shining, beautiful knife.

GET THE KNIFE AND KILL SAM

I wrenched open the drawer. Kitchen implements scattering across the floor with a chorus of metallic screams cut suddenly short. I plunged to my knees scrabbling through the razor prongs of cutlery, ignoring the flickers of pain as metal gouged into my frantic fingers. Then I saw it, a glimmering sheen of metal, barely an arms reach away. Greedily I snached it up. Its shimmering surface draing in my eyes, but as I gazed into the shining metal I saw insidious red pools of hate gazing back.

PLUNGE IT INTO HIS CHEST

Yes, yes, I must plunge the knife… plunge it… My eyes skittered off the smooth edge of the blade to the rotten form of the demon tickling up my leg. It was almost at my groin now, its burning eyes bored into me, its smile shrieked with silent sinister mirth. Thoughts of thrusting the knife into Sam’s bloody chest throbbed in my head. The pulse of blood as the blade entered, his eyes slowly dimming as his face curled into a mask of pain. My mind was swollen with the rasp of the demon’s cackle. My hand tightened on the handle of the blade.

STAB HI-

I sank the blade to the hilt into the meat of my thigh. My mind screamed with the white fire of agony and some other furious howl. Deep red ichor formed on the mouth of the blade and began to ooze down my thigh. Every thought and instinct in my whole body rejected what I was doing.

I began to saw. Each guttural motion erupted spasms of pain and blood. Oozing became flowing and soon puddling. I began openly sobbing and screaming but still I sawed. Up and down, up and down, up and down.

The meat of my thigh was too thick for the sharpness of the blade and progress was agonizingly slow. Dark spots began to blink into my vision but I did not stop until I sat in a pool of cooling blood and a fist sized chunk of flesh lay on the floor. On it, tiny fists curled into balls of rage, a hideous snarl of fury was frozen and unmoving.

“Damn,” I gasped, trying to blink away wooziness, and the growing gaps of darkness that percolated in my vision.

“I think.. I need to go to the hospital.” and suddenly, despite the raging pit of fire that was my left thigh, I felt my chest loosen and a deep belly laugh echoed through my whole body until I was out of breath and panting. Blearily I wiped my eyes.

“Phone, shit - I need my phone. Can’t let this little bastard kill me with blood loss.” Somehow I pushed myself to my feet, steadying myself on the counter as the world twisted and spun.

Slowly, I half limped, half dragged myself into the bedroom. A dribbling trail of red marked my crooked path but finally I was able to slump against my bed. I grasped a shirt from the floor and with clumsy woolen fingers tied it around my thigh.

It was soon damp and the action wrenched fresh stars and patchwork darkness into my vision.

Eventually, it cleared and I began to crawl across the bed to reach for the tiny black phone quietly resting against the wall. The effort wrenched huge desperate gasps from my lungs but two fingers managed to pinch the edge of its case, and I yanked the phone back to cradle against my chest as the world pitched and swam.

Trembling, I raised the phone above me and it illuminated, showing 5 unread messages from Sam. I laughed

“Sam you lucky son of a bitch, you can’t even begin to understand how you owe me.” On a whim I tapped his messages to open them. At first I couldn’t understand what I was reading. Then realization drained the color from my face and dragged my guts through the floor. My body began to shake uncontrollably and unintelligible desperate begging sounds slipped through my lips.

The first message was a picture.

3:14 AM A shriveled green face of pure malevolence stared at me from between Sam’s shoulder blades.

3:20 AM Told you I was considering it! You surprised?

10:16 AM You ok man? You’re not answering

11:43 AM I’m feeling kinda funny after this tattoo, wonder if it got infected my skin is crawling

2:04 PM You home man? I’m coming to check on you

I glanced at the clock. 2:12 PM. Clumsy trembling fingers began to smash the tiny electric letters of the keypad

SAM NO

DO NOT COME OVER

You have to get that tattoo off!

SAM ANSWER

DO NOT COME

I felt my vision swimming, tears and great dark patches blurred my eyes as my heart thrummed in my chest. Then with the resonance of a deep tolling bell I hear the sound of my front door being unlocked.

THE END