Blue

 

Blue Jasper slowly pulled her tattoo instruments from the sterilizer, taking several deep breaths before she turned back to her client. “Take a look in the mirror. Make sure everything is the way you want it.”

 

Rat took the hand mirror from her and examined his upper arm, then got up out of the tattoo chair to check it out in the full-length mirror on the wall. His piggy eyes narrowed as he scrutinized the stencil, his mouth twitching amongst his scraggly facial hair. He had asked her for a flaming skull, and she had dutifully drawn it in marker amidst his other tattoos of spiderwebs and half-naked women. He flexed his muscles in the mirror and grinned with crooked teeth. “You should count yourself lucky. It’s not just any tattoo artist that I trust with this sort of thing.”

 

She nodded but said nothing. If she’d had it her way, she never would have tattooed him at all. But if there was one thing she had learned in this business, it was that she couldn’t pick and choose her art or the canvases she put it on. There were always young girls who wanted silly tramp stamps and guys who really thought they needed their girlfriend’s names on their chests. The only good thing about those clients was that they almost always came back to have their tattoos covered, and that just meant more money for her. It had been a great start to her tattoo career, if not the most creative one.

 

Blue had earned a name for herself, though, and she was far past drawing little butterflies and tiny names. She was often commissioned for large, custom pieces that folks couldn’t get elsewhere, and her calendar at Spencer’s Shop was booked solid for at least six months. She never had to look for work, and that at least was something she could be grateful for. It was more than she had thought would happen for her working at an off-the-path tattoo shop that didn’t attract celebrity clients or the wealthy. There would be no television shows made about Spencer’s Shop, but it was clean and it had a steady clientele. Blue hadn’t gone hungry in over two years.

 

Unfortunately, she was at the whim of guys like Rat, who had plenty of money to toss around and plenty of time to sit in the chair. Blue had heard he was part of a biker gang, something that didn’t sit well with her, and that idea was confirmed by the large men in leather vests who insisted on hanging out while she did her work. They lounged in the chairs in the corner of her booth, getting up and going outside at regular intervals to smoke, and reeking of the stuff when they returned.

 

Rat sat back down in the chair and pointed a thick finger at his buddies. “Which one of you is gonna be next? I can’t be the only one who’s getting inked tonight!”

 

A slim man with fiery red hair that he kept slicked back against his skull shrugged his shoulders. His vest accentuated his skinny shoulders. “Looks like you’ll have to be. You’ve got the best artist in town working on you, and the other guy here says he has appointments. I told him we’d pay double, but I guess nobody around here wants our hard-earned money.” He rolled his eyes toward the other side of the shop.

 

“Why would you want him to work on you anyway, Flame? I’d rather have a sexy little mama like that bending over me.” This man, a short and burly sort with a buzzed scalp, eyed Blue’s ample chest and waggled his eyebrows. He took a slug from a beer bottle and continued to leer.

 

She did her best to ignore him. Blue felt that tattoos were a personal thing. Whatever you got inked on your body should mean something to you or represent something you’d gone through in your life. But people these days just wanted to get them because they thought tattoos were cool, and they liked to make a spectator sport out of it. What could a flaming skull mean to Rat, anyway?

 

With her ink caps ready to go and Rat’s skin sterilized, she reached forward with gloved hands and began running her first line.

 

“Stubble’s right,” Rat agreed, his eye twitching slightly as the needle vibrated in and out of his skin. “This chick is worth all the money I pay her. Just like any other woman, am I right? They’re only good for something if you’re paying them.” He roared with laughter, slapping his thigh with his free hand.

 

Blue immediately pulled back, wiping the extra ink from his skin and relieved to see that he hadn’t messed up her work. “Please sit still.” She didn’t want to know about the kind of women Rat paid, nor what he paid them to do. She couldn’t imagine having to be intimate with a man like that. He smelled bad enough just being in the same room with him, much less in bed with him. Blue just wanted to get it over with and move on.

 

“Yeah, baby. I’ll do whatever you say,” Rat laughed. The scent of alcohol was thick on his breath. “Hey, I think I have some ideas for my next tat. You can fit me in next week, right? I’ve got cash burning in my pocket, and I want to spend it all on you.”

 

She pressed her lips together and focused on her job, finishing the line along the top of the skull and dipping the needle back in the ink cup. His comment was supposed to be flattering, but it wasn’t. She knew there would be no way she could get him in again that soon, even if she wanted to. There was a line out the door of people waiting on her work, and it wasn’t fair she had to waste any of that time on scum like this guy. Other customers wanted good work, the kind that could get her into magazines. A dumb flaming skull on a biker was just more of the flash crap that anybody could churn out.

 

“I’ll have to check my schedule. What do you want?” At least if they talked about tattoos, they weren’t talking about her body.

 

“I think it’s about time I finish my other sleeve. What I have there is good, but it needs something more, something to really finish it off and make people look at it. I was thinking I’d get a tat of you, naked, riding a big cock. You’d be the perfect person to put it on me. What do you think?”

 

“I think you need to find a different artist,” she replied calmly, reminding herself once again that she just had to get through this session and then it would be time to go home. Spencer’s Shop stayed open later than most of the other tattoo shops around did anymore, and it was mostly because of men like Rat that the other places had started keeping earlier hours. Nobody wanted to deal with the bikers. Let people take off work if they wanted tattoos so badly.

 

“Okay, then just act it out for me,” Rat breathed. “I’ve got a big cock right here for you to ride. I’ll even pay you the same rate.”

 

Her face burned as she tried to come up with the right retort. She couldn’t let him get away with such a remark; she didn’t get paid enough for that. But Blue knew he was watching her. He wanted to get a rise out of her, to make her angry. It probably amused him.

 

She was just about to tell him he could get a tattoo of himself sucking a cock when the curtain on her booth flung to the side and Spencer Hagen walked in. The owner of the shop was a tall man with a slim frame, the kind of body that could really only belong to an artist because he wasn’t strong enough for anything else. He’d still had a little bit of free skin left when Blue had first met him, but he had colored in the last few areas in that time. He tried to look tough as he assessed the drinking men in the corner, folding his arms and looking down his nose. “You know, there’s not supposed to be any alcohol in here.”

 

Flame and the shorter man with the eyebrows looked at each other. “Yeah, what do you care?” Flame deliberately took another long drink of beer. “We’re paying customers, aren’t we?”

 

“Technically, it’s your friend over there under the needle who’s paying, and I’m just trying to follow policy. It’s the state’s law, not mine.” That wasn’t completely true. The state law did say nobody was allowed to have alcohol or be drunk while they were getting tattooed, but there were plenty of shops that didn’t pay attention to that little clause. Blue could have thrown Rat out for it, but he hadn’t started drinking until he had already signed his paperwork and sat down in the chair. Besides, he was a little too scary to try to throw out.

 

“I guess we can just tell everyone we know not to come back here,” Rat offered, shifting his focus from Blue and glaring at Spencer. “I know a lot of people in this town, and I could have this shop shut down in an instant.”

 

“I’m just saying to keep it polite,” Spencer amended, backing down. With his short brown hair and soft eyes, Spencer was far from intimidating. “You want to keep your favorite artist employed, don’t you?” He looked at Blue out of the corner of his eye.

 

She knew what that look meant. He was trying to figure out if she was all right. This wasn’t the most ideal situation, but there was little they could do about it unless they wanted to call the police. That wasn’t happening, not if they could avoid it. Having sirens outside your establishment was a quick way to drive away all your customers. Blue gave a subtle nod and went back to work, the sound of her machine filling the room.

 

“You free now, bro?” Flame asked. “I need some ink, bad.”

 

“No,” Spencer replied curtly. “I just came in here for some supplies.” He yanked open a cabinet, pulled out a roll of paper towels, and left, flicking the curtain shut behind him.

 

Though Blue suspected he had really only come in her booth because of the noise, his excuse hadn’t been a bad one. Spencer had given her the larger space in the shop as soon as it had become evident that she was making so much money for him. Spencer was a good artist, too, but everybody wanted their work done by Blue. As a result, her area of the shop had the most floor space, more storage cabinets, and easier access to the sterilizing equipment.

 

“Oh, I get it,” Rat said after a minute. “You’re fucking him.”

 

“Excuse me?” Blue traced the curve of the eye sockets on the skull, but she didn’t stop. Every second that she worked, she was one second closer to getting rid of this douche.

 

“That dude that was just in here, you’re fucking him,” Rat repeated. “That’s why the two of you are always here together, and he doesn’t want me to proposition you. That’s pretty cute, but you can tell your boyfriend that he’s not going to stop me. I can flirt with whoever I want to, especially if I’m paying her for her time.”

 

As much as she wanted to correct Rat and remind him that she wasn’t a prostitute, Blue knew there was little point. He was an asshole, and if he got his jollies from the thought of paying a woman hourly then there was little she could do to change his mind. But she most certainly wasn’t fucking Spencer. “No, I’m not.”

 

“But I bet he wants to fuck you, doesn’t he? I can see it in his eyes. He thinks you’re all cute, with your tattoos and your blue hair and that little nose piercing. I can’t say I blame him. If I were your boss, I’d have you bent over this chair every night. I bet he can’t wait to get a chance at that ass.” His men whooped and hollered while Rat made lewd gestures with his free hand.

 

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time Blue had heard this type of talk from customers. They just usually weren’t quite so direct about it. This was part of being a woman in this industry, but that didn’t make it right. It made her needle want to stray and write something nasty on his arm, but she couldn’t risk her reputation. Tattooing was the only thing she was good at, and she needed to keep this job going. “I guess it’s a good thing you aren’t my boss, then. I’d have to break your dick off and slap you with it.”

 

“Oh, she’s a feisty one!” Rat shouted, smacking the arm of the chair and hooting at his friends. “I like that in a woman. What other dirty things would you like to do to me, baby?” His peanut gallery slapped their legs and shouted, their beer bottles clanking.

 

Blue’s teeth ground together. It didn’t matter what she said; Rat would find a way to turn it around and make it work for him. Even complete silence would probably make him happy, because he would still know he was getting to her. She couldn’t win against him. He was a typical biker, and they could all fall off the face of the planet for all she cared.

 

The curtain swung aside once again, the metal rings making a quick zing against the rod. Spencer’s dark eyes were fiery as he pointed toward the door. “All right, that’s enough. The two of you get out.”

 

“Hey, what did we do?” Stubble demanded. He held out his pudgy tattooed arms in innocence. “We’re just here to support our friend.”

 

“Yeah, and you’re drinking on the premises and harassing my artist. In fact, all three of you can get out right now.” He gestured toward Rat, beckoning him to come up out of the chair.

 

“Don’t you dare stop what you’re doing,” Rat growled at Blue.

 

She was caught between listening to her boss and obeying this massive biker, but in the end intimidation won. Blue kept at her work, focusing on the quick pulse of the tattoo machine and running good, clean lines. Tattooing was the one thing that had interested her most when she had found herself alone in the world and trying to find a way to make a living. She had always loved to draw, and she’d quickly discovered that it wasn’t quite the same thing to draw on live skin. People moved a lot more than sketchpads or canvases did, and no one person had the same skin as the next. But that was what made it all the more interesting for her. It was more of a challenge than just cranking out a drawing.

 

Once she had gotten used to the feel of a machine in her hand instead of a pencil, it had become such a deep passion that she could completely lose herself in it. Blue was just another color in the mix. She was addicted to the way the pigments welled on the skin around the needle, and the crisp lines that were left when she wiped the extra ink away. More than once, she had finished a tattoo and sat back as though coming out of a daze.

 

This experience wasn’t like that. The commotion in the room kept her from immersing herself unconditionally. Flame and Stubble were yelling unintelligibly at Spencer, waving their beer bottles and sloshing the cheap liquid on the floor. They kept her in the moment, reminding her that life wasn’t really art like someone famous had once said. Art was an escape from life, and one that she needed far too often.

 

“This doesn’t have to be difficult,” Spencer insisted. He wasn’t giving up this time. “But I do have rules here, and this is my shop. Now you can get out and go peacefully, or I’ll be forced to call the cops.”

 

Blue lifted her foot from the machine’s control switch and closed her eyes. That was the wrong thing to say. These men weren’t intimidated by the idea of the law showing up, and Spencer should have known that. Rat growled at her once again, and she continued the tattoo. She just had to keep her head down and wait for this all to be over with. Spencer was the boss, and if he told her to stop then she would. Until then, Blue would just keep on doing what she did best.

 

“Oh, yeah? You want to threaten me, motherfucker? Maybe you ought to have something to back it up with, first.” Stubble stepped forward and pounded the flats of his hands into Spencer’s chest.

 

The motion caught the shop owner off-guard, and he tumbled across the room. Right into Blue.

 

She lifted her foot, but it was too late. She watched in horror as her needle made a swipe across the skin of Rat’s arm, jetting down from the line of the skull and inking a thick black line deep into his skin. It happened in slow motion, and yet there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just by the way it felt, she knew the needle had gone too deep. Not only was there a line where there shouldn’t have been, but it would blow out. Rat’s body would carry the ink away from the original line, causing it to smudge and look blurry. This wasn’t good.

 

The biker stared at his arm for a moment before jumping out of the chair. He knocked Blue aside as he snatched the beer bottle out of Stubble’s hand and smashed it against the wall, breaking the bottom half off and sending froth and pisswater all over the room. He brandished his new weapon at Blue.

 

“You leave her alone!” Spencer shouted, but his efforts were useless. The other two bikers had him by the arms and held him back easily, laughing.

 

Rat stepped forward slowly, the sharp edges of the bottle glinting in the bright light of the shop. He was a big man, making the bottle look small in his hands, but it was more than capable of injuring or even killing whoever he decided to use it on. “You just fucked me up,” he snarled. “I pay you good money, tell everyone I know to come here and see you, and this is the kind of shit you do to me?” There was genuine offense in his eyes as he advanced.

 

“It was an accident,” she protested, hating herself for sounding so weak. She could hear the shaking of her voice, and that was just the sort of thing that would keep Rat going. But her heart thundered so loudly in her ears that it stopped her from thinking. There had to be a good way out of this. Why, of all the things that could have happened, did it have to be that? “Just let it heal, and I’ll cover it up. No charge.” Blue would give him that much, but she wouldn’t go so far as to offer him a tattoo of her own naked body.

 

But the biker slowly shook his head, coming closer. “You think you can just pout at me and I’ll be dumb enough to fall for it, but I know better. You can’t fix this, not the way it’s supposed to be done. No, little girl. You mess me up, and I’ll mess you up right back. An eye for an eye. It’s a shame, too, because you had such a pretty face.” He pinned her to the chair by her shoulder, raising the bottle and aiming right for her face.

 

Blue saw the shop in sharp relief. The rack of flash on the wall, each holding artwork she had come to know so well. She didn’t even like working from flash, having done those same tattoos over and over again, but the thought of never seeing them again was more than she could bear. The painting she had done of a blue fairy, just for fun, that a client had asked her to copy onto her back. A photo of her with a young man who had been her very first customer when she had finished her internship under Spencer and was ready to wield a needle on her own. She hadn’t paid much attention to her booth and everything in it for a while, taking for granted that it would always be there. But everything was about to end, and she wished she had taken more time to enjoy it all. Even the storage cabinets, the sterilization equipment, and the stainless steel sink in the corner were precious at that moment.

 

Her remorse was so deep that she almost didn’t see the massive hand that wrapped around Rat’s fingers and twisted the bottle out of his grip. The newcomer shoved the biker backwards, roaring with rage and turning the weapon on its original owner. He slammed the broken bottle into Rat’s face. It encircled his eye, the shards sinking into the flesh. For a split-second, nothing happened. The entire scene seemed to freeze, with the strange man holding the neck of the bottle, Rat’s fingers spread wide, Flame and Stubble staring in disbelief, and Spencer’s face a display of horror.

 

But it all came to life again instantly, with blood gushing forth and streaming down Rat’s cheek. The sound of his scream filled the room. Flame and Stubble flung Spencer aside and went for their leader. The nameless man dropped the bottle, and it fell to the floor and smashed into a hundred little brown pieces.

 

Blue stayed glued to the chair, watching the scene unfold before her. The new man, whom she hadn’t seen before, stood over her with his fists raised and his chin tipped up, daring the bikers to come back for more. His dark hair matched the solid black tattoos that traced down his arms from the tight sleeves of his t-shirt. From her vantage point, his head seemed to brush the ceiling, even though she knew that couldn’t be true.

 

Rat screamed again from the floor while the smaller men tried to get him to his feet. “Get me the fuck out of here!” he yelled, keeping one hand pressed to his eye. His feet scrambled underneath him but refused to work. Blood oozed out from between his fingers and ran down his arm. They did as they were told, scrabbling to get him on his feet and out of the building.

 

Spencer immediately ran after them and locked the door, ensuring they wouldn’t be able to come back in should they decide to continue the fight. He looked pale and drawn, his fingers shaking, but his face grew a shade lighter when he looked at Blue. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”

 

Slowly, as though her body wasn’t quite willing to cooperate, Blue stood from the chair. The dark-haired man held out his hand to help her up. She almost batted it away, but as soon as she was sitting up straight she knew she couldn’t. Her head reeled from the close call. The big man’s fingers closed around hers, injecting a warmth she hadn’t expected. She grabbed the paper towels and the trash can and immediately began mopping up the mess.

 

“You don’t have to worry about that right now,” Spencer protested as he hovered uselessly in the doorway. “We can get that later. Besides, the police will want to see the evidence of what happened.”

 

She glared at him out of self-defense. It was either be angry or cry, and she was damned if she was going to cry here. “Don’t call the fucking cops, Spence. They don’t care. Rat and his goons are long gone by now, and they would only play innocent.” She felt her stomach lurch as she tossed a blood-soaked towel in the trash. It was different dealing with blood when it was heavily colored with ink. The puddle on the floor was a deep red that made her think of her own mortality. It could have been her. It almost had been.

 

“Okay, but are you sure you should be doing that?” The shop owner sank into one of the chairs near the wall, the ones that were meant for those who came to support their friends while they got inked. “I mean, I don’t think I feel well enough to do anything.”

 

“I’ll be fine,” she grumbled.

 

Blue changed out her gloves and reached for the disinfectant. She was adamant about keeping her booth clean and sterile, and these stupid bikers had screwed all that up. Blue would need to clean for days to get it back up to standard, and even then she wasn’t sure she would stop seeing and smelling the blood and beer. Besides, she couldn’t stand to just sit around and feel sorry for herself. She had learned a long time ago that it didn’t help matters, and it was much better to do something about the situation. Even if cleaning up the blood wouldn’t erase the memory of Rat standing over her with that broken bottle, she could still get rid of the evidence.

 

She could feel the newcomer looming over her, watching her, but he said nothing. She glanced up at him and quickly turned her face away, not wanting him to see all the pain that was written on her face. “Thanks, by the way.”

 

“I should have come in sooner.” His voice was a deep and pleasant rumble, one that resembled the crunch of a long gravel road that led to nowhere. “Maybe you need to hire a bouncer for this place.”

 

Blue laughed in spite of herself. None of this was a laughing matter. “Maybe so. But I don’t think it would stop guys like that. They want their ink, and they think they deserve it.” She turned to Spencer as she began wiping down the chair. “The other shops have switched to daylight hours. Think it’s time we should do the same?”

 

Spencer had folded himself over in the chair so that his face was in his hands. He shook his head and sat back, resting his head against the wall and rolling his dark eyes toward the ceiling. “I don’t know. I’m not sure how well it would work. Guys like Rat don’t exactly keep office hours, you know? Besides, if we’re not open in the evenings, we’ll lose all our clients that come by after work. We might as well close the whole damn place if we’re going to do that.”

 

“I guess you’re right. We’d have to rearrange all the appointments we have on the books right now, too.” Blue straightened, reaching out to catch herself on the counter as another wave of dizziness took over her. Her vision darkened around the edges, tunneling to one bright spot of color at the center before it slowly began righting itself again. What was the matter with her?

 

“Are you sure you’re okay?” the strange man asked. He stepped up behind her.

 

But his words echoed in her ears without reaching all the way to her brain. The room went dark completely this time and she fell, down and down and down without stopping.