Picture Perfect
9 October 2007 00:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skonen_bladesThe procedure would be virtually painless, they said.
I’d set up an appointment two days ago. The shop itself was in a dingy part of town that I hadn’t been to very often. I was a little afraid. There were quite a lot of people that looked like they were on drugs or homeless. Not that I have a problem with that. I just sort of don’t like to be around it. It reminds me that people can fall hard and not get back up. I don’t like being reminded of that.
The price was right, though, and Tracey was crazy about guys who did this. I parked my car and walked into the dingy shop and looked around. A red leather couch spilled stuffing onto an ancient green linoleum floor. A ceiling fan hung motionless from the dark wood of the roof.
The bored receptionist sitting beside the cash register blended into the surroundings. I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t alone until she cleared her throat. She was paused in mid gum-chew, her nail file hovering an inch away from her bright red nails, and she was staring at me.
“Usual or something special?” she asked.
A man came out from the back wearing an eyepatch, sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. The blatant illegal activity of that cigarette shocked me. The man had tattoos covering the entire flesh of each beefy arm.
“Uh, the usual.” I managed to stammer out.
With a disgusted grunt, the tattooed man went back into his room.
“Didja bring a pitcher?” she asked.
I fished out the print I had made of my boy’s whitewater rafting trip when he was six. That was the most fun we’d had as father and son so far.
I passed it across to her and she fed it into the scanner.
I ran my wrist across the grey plastic reader on the counter and the light charged green. I became a few hundred dollars poorer in a millisecond but it would be worth it. I couldn’t wait to see my family's reaction.
“Now, since this is just the usual, it’ll all be handled by robot.” She droned on in a voice that had repeated this over and over a thousand times. “You’ll be strapped to the table and immobilized so that you don’t move while the spider starts to its work.”
I moved into the tiny cubicle and took off my shirt.
”Where do you want it?” she asked with a playful raise of the eyebrow.
“Uh, my back.” I answered. With a sigh that said, ‘yeah, you and everyone else’, she left.
Both of them looked like they were both old enough to remember when tattoos were only done by humans. Probably both Artists who hated the technological invention of the spider-armed skin printer.
I layed down on the table and let the girl strap me in. It didn’t occur to me until she closed the door as she left and I heard the whir of machinery on the ceiling behind me that I didn’t even know her name.
I heard the eight-armed machine clatter to life and take posession. I knew that in it's tiny brain, the picture was being torn into pixels and organized into lines.
That first laser-burned colour line across my back stung a little but the clamps keep me from moving a muscle. The snapshot of me and boy in the rapids would be tattooed on my back for life.
I couldn’t wait to show Tracey. I smiled into the headrest as dotted line after dotted line of colour was etched beneath the skin of my back.
tags
I’d set up an appointment two days ago. The shop itself was in a dingy part of town that I hadn’t been to very often. I was a little afraid. There were quite a lot of people that looked like they were on drugs or homeless. Not that I have a problem with that. I just sort of don’t like to be around it. It reminds me that people can fall hard and not get back up. I don’t like being reminded of that.
The price was right, though, and Tracey was crazy about guys who did this. I parked my car and walked into the dingy shop and looked around. A red leather couch spilled stuffing onto an ancient green linoleum floor. A ceiling fan hung motionless from the dark wood of the roof.
The bored receptionist sitting beside the cash register blended into the surroundings. I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t alone until she cleared her throat. She was paused in mid gum-chew, her nail file hovering an inch away from her bright red nails, and she was staring at me.
“Usual or something special?” she asked.
A man came out from the back wearing an eyepatch, sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. The blatant illegal activity of that cigarette shocked me. The man had tattoos covering the entire flesh of each beefy arm.
“Uh, the usual.” I managed to stammer out.
With a disgusted grunt, the tattooed man went back into his room.
“Didja bring a pitcher?” she asked.
I fished out the print I had made of my boy’s whitewater rafting trip when he was six. That was the most fun we’d had as father and son so far.
I passed it across to her and she fed it into the scanner.
I ran my wrist across the grey plastic reader on the counter and the light charged green. I became a few hundred dollars poorer in a millisecond but it would be worth it. I couldn’t wait to see my family's reaction.
“Now, since this is just the usual, it’ll all be handled by robot.” She droned on in a voice that had repeated this over and over a thousand times. “You’ll be strapped to the table and immobilized so that you don’t move while the spider starts to its work.”
I moved into the tiny cubicle and took off my shirt.
”Where do you want it?” she asked with a playful raise of the eyebrow.
“Uh, my back.” I answered. With a sigh that said, ‘yeah, you and everyone else’, she left.
Both of them looked like they were both old enough to remember when tattoos were only done by humans. Probably both Artists who hated the technological invention of the spider-armed skin printer.
I layed down on the table and let the girl strap me in. It didn’t occur to me until she closed the door as she left and I heard the whir of machinery on the ceiling behind me that I didn’t even know her name.
I heard the eight-armed machine clatter to life and take posession. I knew that in it's tiny brain, the picture was being torn into pixels and organized into lines.
That first laser-burned colour line across my back stung a little but the clamps keep me from moving a muscle. The snapshot of me and boy in the rapids would be tattooed on my back for life.
I couldn’t wait to show Tracey. I smiled into the headrest as dotted line after dotted line of colour was etched beneath the skin of my back.
tags
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Re: "flesh" bothers me
Date: 9 Oct 2007 17:34 (UTC)