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The Tattooed Shadow
Oct. 18th, 2011 04:12 pmRaw light incinerates the soothing black emptiness away, evaporating the last dew of dream into vapor ghosts wafting from recollection’s grave. Vision ignites with a searing white haze, yielding silhouettes that quickly shimmer around him into the details of an unfamiliar room. An instinctual panic jolts him upright and the effort spills him from a tattered couch sitting crooked off its last leg. He lays there nailed through the skull to the floor by the jagged edge of a fierce headache. Sprawled helpless amongst the discarded cans of cheap beer and spent dime bags, he stares up at a mucus green ceiling trying to navigate his emerging thoughts through a hazy labyrinth of questions. Where? When? How?
He’s got nothing. Nothing but the pain drilling just above and between the eyes.
Glancing around vainly in search of a clue, he’s dimly aware of being in a small room of some sort. That it’s abandoned is quickly obvious. Stained white wallpaper imprinted with the negative white Hiroshima shadows of absent furniture with faded blue flower patterns scrawled over in vandal’s poetry. Two windows with grime soaked blinds leaking with a dull gray glow. Hunkered in the corner a heap of discarded television sets with big black bugs flitting across the screens before vanishing into their cracks. He sighs deep in frustration.
And something mean, rotten and ugly awakens from the acidic waters of his belly, spreads black oily wings of nausea and…
… the gag reflex hits hard. Instinctively he bolts up and runs with fingers slapped over ballooned cheeks. He finds the bathroom by luck or instinct or something else entirely forgotten. Kneeling on chipped tiles, hugging the front of a leper yellow commode, he yawns ultraviolet and glow stick green chunks into its dank void. Each explosion is followed by an appalling coughing fit that ends with blood drooling from day-glow blue caked lips.
A fragment of memory slips through the fever heat.
The Beef Fartz show at the Cotton Mill Club. His first night back out on the Scene since… since the ‘incident’. He avoided the pit and clung to the bar in the back. Zero prospects for not going home alone, all potential contenders otherwise occupied or simply not worth the effort. Sure the alcohol softens up the standards some, but if you go home with any woman then the right ones never will. Instead he somehow ended up in a conversation with this cat from out of town. Scrawny blond bastard in a black hoodie with a leather jacket with sleeves painted with odd symbols. Yankee by the accent he tried to hide and the amplified hand gestures that gave it away. They talked about the old school punk shows from back in the day, when a show was actually a fucking show. Four drunks with nothing but fresh out of the pawn shop instruments and a fuck you attitude. Nothing like any of this arrhythmic noise bullshit they were listening to now. They traded war stories over the din of the band and it wasn’t long until the dude thought he was cool enough to join him for a bump in the bathroom real quick.
Funny thing was his name… what was it?
Aaron End or Alan Omega or something like that.
Anyway, it was the last thing he remembered.
Another vomit wave drowns out the memory , emptying the contents of his guts with a phosphorescent spray and turning up the heat on the fever to 10.
“It’ll pass. After all you know what they say, ” A familiar voice offers non-chalantly from over his shoulder, “’Magick before liquor never sicker. Liquor before magick now that’s the trick!’”
He turns around and no one’s there.
“Over here, Craig.” A voice speaks just to his right shoulder but no one is there.
“Stand up and look.” The words float around the room invisibly, but Craig finds himself obeying, balancing himself off the rim before realizing exactly what he’s done.
Standing there, wiping the glowing vomit on his sleeves off his pants, he looks around the bathroom with slow pivoting steps…
“You’re getting warmer, warmer… hot!”
Craig stops and stares into the mirror hovering cracked over the sink; directly behind his reflection the dude with the funny name from last night.
He spins around with a punch that would’ve done some serious damage if someone was standing there to greet it. Instead the empty air reverberates with a nasally laugh. That of a demented little boy borrowing a grown up’s throat to giggle with.
Craig looks back at the mirror directly into the reflection of the man who isn’t there. “Th’ fuck’d you do t’me, asshole?!?!”
The reflections smiles with all the cruelty of a joke whose punch line is you.
“What’d I do? Shiiiit, that’s not the real question now is it, Craig? The real question is what’d you do to deserve it? But to be fair you still have no idea what it is exactly I’ve done to you.” The reflection snickers and points a pistol finger directly towards Craig’s temple.
Following the barrel-finger’s jab, he glances back into the mirror. The last stand of a mohawk with drooping spikes creating an odd comb-over effect. Baggy eyes charcoal painted. Pronounced cheekbones flecked with black stubble and six letters, one word, boldly stamped in red from temple to temple across his forehead: SNITCH.
Craig slaps at the word and starts rubbing at it furiously with his palms. When the word doesn’t so much as smudge, he opens up the faucet’s full blast and begins washing frantic at the letters with tepid, rust brown water.
“True story,” the reflection muses, turning away inside the mirror to saunter over to the door less frame of the bathroom and prop himself with one knee up within it, “Carlos Chameleon, under whose tutelage I once had the privilege of serving under…”
“The fuck did’ja do to me!” Craig whimpers as the letters seem to only grow brighter and brighter with each scrub administered.
“I’m getting to that,” the reflection lights up a cigarette and the actual bathroom begins to fill slowly with unwinding spirals of blue smoke. “Anyway, Carlos taught me a few things about, well… stuff you’re probably not ready to believe in. Not yet anyway. But what you're seeing isn't everything, Craig. To really appreciate it we need to shed a little light on the subject… “
And the reflection reaches in offhandedly to throw on a switch and the bathroom bursts into a flickering amber haze. Craig looks up and though the room is lit up the single bulb hanging above him remains smashed in the socket.
The reflection nods to his left, Craig turns around and catches his shadow splayed amplified against a mold splattered white plastic shower curtain. Across the shadow’s forehead there is a symbol inscribed within a circle, one unrecognized by Craig, pulsating in hues of crimson and orange.
Craig begins chewing at the words that fail to express what he’s witnessing, they build instead to the drone of a mounting whine that explodes into a howl as he tears the shower curtain down, spins to the mirror and punches the reflection with a right hook.
Crash, animal scream and dozens of blood splattered reflections shaking their r heads dismissively.
“Now Craig, there are worse things that can happen. For example you could an 8 Ball fronted to you, when you’re already in the hole for one large, but it’s an old friend and he knows you’ve been having a tough since your woman left you. So you go out and try to get laid but can’t… even with some of the finest blow circulating Terminus. So, you decide to get drunk and drunk you get desperate and desperate you don’t call your ex, but instead drive directly to her place. But when you show up, instead of wanting to party, she’s got some other guy there, so you start to make a scene. You pick a fight. You sucker punch the guy and boot check him from there…
“No, no, no… that’s not how it happened. You weren’t there. “ Craig stammers almost incoherently and searches around the bathroom desperately. A puff of smoke streams into his face.
“Don’t try playing me… or yourself. I saw the whole thing go down. Watched it all reflected in the mirror we were doing bumps off of. You boot checked the poor fuck and when she tried pulling you off him you, well, then you really got mad didn’t you? Tough guy, you. But that’s not why I’m here, Craig. Naw, I’m here ‘cause of what you did when the cops found what was left of your 8 Ball after taking you down. I’m here ‘cause of the good man whose life you ruined to salvage what was left of your own. I’m here because of the first rule of magick… and that’s that all power resides in the name. So when you dropped your boy’s like a little bitch, you inadvertently summoned some very, very nasty people who live in the places you can’t see. “
“Yeah?” Craig hisses shaking the pain out of his fist, glass shards glittering on bloodied knuckles, “Then why don’t you step on up and face me like a man.”
The reflection smiles, snorts and shakes its head. “Oh, Craig… haven’t you figured out by now that I’m so much more than just a man.”
“Fuck you!”
“You’re not my type and I’d get used to hearing that if I were you. See here’s the thing. No one but you will be able to see that little word I tattooed across your shadow… but they’ll still be able to read it just fine. You’ll be broadcasting a shortwave telepathic subliminal message to the entire world. Long story short, from now on, wherever you go, no matter their word for it – everyone you ever meet will know you exactly for what you are. A ‘Snitch’. “
Craig stands there fuming at the mirror, no longer rubbing at the words but clawing at them with dirty finger nails.
“Now unfortunately, I have to get going. But don’t worry. I’ve arranged a ride for you. Some friends of the friend you fucked over, actually. Their right outside actually and ready to give you a ride out of town, because that’s where you’re living now, but not before they throw you a little going away party of their own I’m sure.”
“I’ll find you, mother fucker!” Craig barks at the reflection as it steps out of the hollow frame of the doorway and shrugs.
“I’m right here in front of your face and you can’t find me, Craig. Do you really think you’ll have better luck when I actually don’t want to be found? Besides, between you and me, it’s gonna be a long time before you can walk again, much less set foot in Terminus.”
Adam Last steps out of the corner of the mirror’s reflection and vanishes out of the dilapidated house the way an answer vanishes before the question’s truth.
The bathroom dims around Craig as blood begins to trickle down his forehead, mingling with the tears stinging his mascara dabbed eyes. He doesn’t even hear the stomping boots of two of Ronnie’s finest hired goons as they lumber into the mirror’s reflection behind him.
He’s got nothing. Nothing but the pain drilling just above and between the eyes.
Glancing around vainly in search of a clue, he’s dimly aware of being in a small room of some sort. That it’s abandoned is quickly obvious. Stained white wallpaper imprinted with the negative white Hiroshima shadows of absent furniture with faded blue flower patterns scrawled over in vandal’s poetry. Two windows with grime soaked blinds leaking with a dull gray glow. Hunkered in the corner a heap of discarded television sets with big black bugs flitting across the screens before vanishing into their cracks. He sighs deep in frustration.
And something mean, rotten and ugly awakens from the acidic waters of his belly, spreads black oily wings of nausea and…
… the gag reflex hits hard. Instinctively he bolts up and runs with fingers slapped over ballooned cheeks. He finds the bathroom by luck or instinct or something else entirely forgotten. Kneeling on chipped tiles, hugging the front of a leper yellow commode, he yawns ultraviolet and glow stick green chunks into its dank void. Each explosion is followed by an appalling coughing fit that ends with blood drooling from day-glow blue caked lips.
A fragment of memory slips through the fever heat.
The Beef Fartz show at the Cotton Mill Club. His first night back out on the Scene since… since the ‘incident’. He avoided the pit and clung to the bar in the back. Zero prospects for not going home alone, all potential contenders otherwise occupied or simply not worth the effort. Sure the alcohol softens up the standards some, but if you go home with any woman then the right ones never will. Instead he somehow ended up in a conversation with this cat from out of town. Scrawny blond bastard in a black hoodie with a leather jacket with sleeves painted with odd symbols. Yankee by the accent he tried to hide and the amplified hand gestures that gave it away. They talked about the old school punk shows from back in the day, when a show was actually a fucking show. Four drunks with nothing but fresh out of the pawn shop instruments and a fuck you attitude. Nothing like any of this arrhythmic noise bullshit they were listening to now. They traded war stories over the din of the band and it wasn’t long until the dude thought he was cool enough to join him for a bump in the bathroom real quick.
Funny thing was his name… what was it?
Aaron End or Alan Omega or something like that.
Anyway, it was the last thing he remembered.
Another vomit wave drowns out the memory , emptying the contents of his guts with a phosphorescent spray and turning up the heat on the fever to 10.
“It’ll pass. After all you know what they say, ” A familiar voice offers non-chalantly from over his shoulder, “’Magick before liquor never sicker. Liquor before magick now that’s the trick!’”
He turns around and no one’s there.
“Over here, Craig.” A voice speaks just to his right shoulder but no one is there.
“Stand up and look.” The words float around the room invisibly, but Craig finds himself obeying, balancing himself off the rim before realizing exactly what he’s done.
Standing there, wiping the glowing vomit on his sleeves off his pants, he looks around the bathroom with slow pivoting steps…
“You’re getting warmer, warmer… hot!”
Craig stops and stares into the mirror hovering cracked over the sink; directly behind his reflection the dude with the funny name from last night.
He spins around with a punch that would’ve done some serious damage if someone was standing there to greet it. Instead the empty air reverberates with a nasally laugh. That of a demented little boy borrowing a grown up’s throat to giggle with.
Craig looks back at the mirror directly into the reflection of the man who isn’t there. “Th’ fuck’d you do t’me, asshole?!?!”
The reflections smiles with all the cruelty of a joke whose punch line is you.
“What’d I do? Shiiiit, that’s not the real question now is it, Craig? The real question is what’d you do to deserve it? But to be fair you still have no idea what it is exactly I’ve done to you.” The reflection snickers and points a pistol finger directly towards Craig’s temple.
Following the barrel-finger’s jab, he glances back into the mirror. The last stand of a mohawk with drooping spikes creating an odd comb-over effect. Baggy eyes charcoal painted. Pronounced cheekbones flecked with black stubble and six letters, one word, boldly stamped in red from temple to temple across his forehead: SNITCH.
Craig slaps at the word and starts rubbing at it furiously with his palms. When the word doesn’t so much as smudge, he opens up the faucet’s full blast and begins washing frantic at the letters with tepid, rust brown water.
“True story,” the reflection muses, turning away inside the mirror to saunter over to the door less frame of the bathroom and prop himself with one knee up within it, “Carlos Chameleon, under whose tutelage I once had the privilege of serving under…”
“The fuck did’ja do to me!” Craig whimpers as the letters seem to only grow brighter and brighter with each scrub administered.
“I’m getting to that,” the reflection lights up a cigarette and the actual bathroom begins to fill slowly with unwinding spirals of blue smoke. “Anyway, Carlos taught me a few things about, well… stuff you’re probably not ready to believe in. Not yet anyway. But what you're seeing isn't everything, Craig. To really appreciate it we need to shed a little light on the subject… “
And the reflection reaches in offhandedly to throw on a switch and the bathroom bursts into a flickering amber haze. Craig looks up and though the room is lit up the single bulb hanging above him remains smashed in the socket.
The reflection nods to his left, Craig turns around and catches his shadow splayed amplified against a mold splattered white plastic shower curtain. Across the shadow’s forehead there is a symbol inscribed within a circle, one unrecognized by Craig, pulsating in hues of crimson and orange.
Craig begins chewing at the words that fail to express what he’s witnessing, they build instead to the drone of a mounting whine that explodes into a howl as he tears the shower curtain down, spins to the mirror and punches the reflection with a right hook.
Crash, animal scream and dozens of blood splattered reflections shaking their r heads dismissively.
“Now Craig, there are worse things that can happen. For example you could an 8 Ball fronted to you, when you’re already in the hole for one large, but it’s an old friend and he knows you’ve been having a tough since your woman left you. So you go out and try to get laid but can’t… even with some of the finest blow circulating Terminus. So, you decide to get drunk and drunk you get desperate and desperate you don’t call your ex, but instead drive directly to her place. But when you show up, instead of wanting to party, she’s got some other guy there, so you start to make a scene. You pick a fight. You sucker punch the guy and boot check him from there…
“No, no, no… that’s not how it happened. You weren’t there. “ Craig stammers almost incoherently and searches around the bathroom desperately. A puff of smoke streams into his face.
“Don’t try playing me… or yourself. I saw the whole thing go down. Watched it all reflected in the mirror we were doing bumps off of. You boot checked the poor fuck and when she tried pulling you off him you, well, then you really got mad didn’t you? Tough guy, you. But that’s not why I’m here, Craig. Naw, I’m here ‘cause of what you did when the cops found what was left of your 8 Ball after taking you down. I’m here ‘cause of the good man whose life you ruined to salvage what was left of your own. I’m here because of the first rule of magick… and that’s that all power resides in the name. So when you dropped your boy’s like a little bitch, you inadvertently summoned some very, very nasty people who live in the places you can’t see. “
“Yeah?” Craig hisses shaking the pain out of his fist, glass shards glittering on bloodied knuckles, “Then why don’t you step on up and face me like a man.”
The reflection smiles, snorts and shakes its head. “Oh, Craig… haven’t you figured out by now that I’m so much more than just a man.”
“Fuck you!”
“You’re not my type and I’d get used to hearing that if I were you. See here’s the thing. No one but you will be able to see that little word I tattooed across your shadow… but they’ll still be able to read it just fine. You’ll be broadcasting a shortwave telepathic subliminal message to the entire world. Long story short, from now on, wherever you go, no matter their word for it – everyone you ever meet will know you exactly for what you are. A ‘Snitch’. “
Craig stands there fuming at the mirror, no longer rubbing at the words but clawing at them with dirty finger nails.
“Now unfortunately, I have to get going. But don’t worry. I’ve arranged a ride for you. Some friends of the friend you fucked over, actually. Their right outside actually and ready to give you a ride out of town, because that’s where you’re living now, but not before they throw you a little going away party of their own I’m sure.”
“I’ll find you, mother fucker!” Craig barks at the reflection as it steps out of the hollow frame of the doorway and shrugs.
“I’m right here in front of your face and you can’t find me, Craig. Do you really think you’ll have better luck when I actually don’t want to be found? Besides, between you and me, it’s gonna be a long time before you can walk again, much less set foot in Terminus.”
Adam Last steps out of the corner of the mirror’s reflection and vanishes out of the dilapidated house the way an answer vanishes before the question’s truth.
The bathroom dims around Craig as blood begins to trickle down his forehead, mingling with the tears stinging his mascara dabbed eyes. He doesn’t even hear the stomping boots of two of Ronnie’s finest hired goons as they lumber into the mirror’s reflection behind him.