A Procession of the Damned: [Jesse Fforde]

[Courtney]

Somewhere, in all of those files, Courtney probably had any number of repeated fire-related deaths that he could've scrolled through to find connections, but he hadn't been looking for them, lately. He didn't want to play the cat-and-mouse game with some serial killer.

Serial killers were always so tenuous. The majority of them were driven by the need to sate their own egos or their compulsions.

He use to be mildly obsessed with them -- killers.

He use to romanticize them, to think they were something special, but that was all the work of fiction. Fiction was always prettier than the reality. The reality being terribly fucked up people living terribly fucked up lives, wounded and raised in neglect and trauma, sexualized or objectified as the children of narcissists, who they later murdered in an attempt to be free of the fell, odorous breath of emotional abuse.

The obsession probably started, when he was twelve, when he laid down and played dead for his grandmother's boyfriend, out in some swamp in Texas.

He wasn't sure, anymore, where one area of his life began and the next area of it ended, or whose life he was living, anyway.

He sucked his cigarette until the smoke filled his nasal passages, his cheeks, made his head fell light and gauzy. He pretended he wasn't a hopeless PTSD case wavering along in a cruel and strange universe.

He pretended that he had a sense of spiritualism, keeping him grounded, keeping him clinging to life.

But he dissipated, like the smoke he blew through the cracked window of his shitty, little car.

In a few months, he'd meet Dominique. He'd be dropping his car off so she could fix it.

He'd be moving out of Bunk and into a trailer a woman named Pi would be renting him for two-hundred -- not a bad price -- a month.

He'd still be caught in the throes of chasing down what emotions belonged to him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It wasn't until he got up to the door that a wave of nausea hit him. There was some type of mental block, that little voice screaming for him to leave, again, but, like most times, he ignored it.

Maybe, internally, he knew how dangerous Jesse was.

Maybe he knew, because that was what he was trained to know. He'd spent tons of money on an education so he could pick people apart, so he could be warned, on meeting, what types of people to avoid, and he'd spent all that money on all that education just to end up...

Walking through the doorway of a man who'd just committed a double-homicide and then covered it up with fire, not that Courntey knew about any of that.

When he walked in, he looked, mostly, at his feet.

The blue lights seeped in around them.

And, then, the blue lights were gone, and he was moving through the double-doors, glancing at the tattoo chair to the left of the front desk.

Cleared his throat.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse finds himself staring at his customer—a Mister Courtney Apple—for longer than is necessary. The guy is so strange, somehow, and yet Jesse cannot put his finger on it. The way he acts, like some kind of skittish, timid animal. And yet he’s not the same as other skittish, timid animals. Jesse finds himself curious. Very, very curious about how Courtney Apple would react if thrown into different situations and scenarios.

It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve turned a customer.

He shoves the inclination away. No, he tells himself. No, not yet. Not now. Maybe not ever. Inwardly, the Necromancer scolds himself. These humans aren’t just experiments. And one of these days he was going to have a turned progeny on his hands that he won’t be able to control, and who’ll… no, wait, he already has one of those. One who wants him dead. But so far, she hasn’t succeeded in even grazing the skin. Jesse puts Aria out of mind, and finally stands to greet his customer. He gestures toward the chair from the previous evening, but says nothing. Perhaps he is testing Courtney Apple anyway—not throwing him into the deep end just yet, but figuring out what kind of man he is. Is he smart enough to recall the previous evening’s events and simply follow through with what he already knows? To sit. To take off his shirt. To allow Jesse room to work.

”I did wonder whether you would come back,” he says, his voice gravelly, as per usual, but not so much as it would be were he in need of blood. Yes, he’s still thirsty, but he’s had his required nourishment for the evening. Perhaps the smoke inhalation has something to do with it—he can still taste the acrid black smoke at the back of his throat, clinging to the tastebuds of his tongue. Smoke and thick hipster blood. His tongue runs along the outside of his teeth, as if searching for leftovers. There are none.

”Make yourself comfortable, man. This shouldn’t take long,” he says, already pulling on the white surgical gloves.

[Courtney]

He wasn't the same as other timid animals. No. Courtney. He wasn't like them -- the things that jump and run. He's a kicked dog, released into the wild. Some type of unawakened predator, in his own right, and the type of man who'd react accordingly to situations he was thrown in. The type of man who'd deteriorate and beat himself as he fought for control, fought not to be blood-thirst, like all those people who crept and crawled and lurked in the dark recesses of alleyways, who inhabited jail cells thanks to testimonies he'd given on stands in court rooms across international borders.

Courtney was hungry, too.

He had the stench
of trailer park fire
in his nose and
the back of his
throat.

Swallow-
ing.
Swallow-
ing.
Swallowing.

Courtney had all that surreptitious, psychic debris bombarding him head-on.

He shouldn't have. Come back. He should've let the ink rot, let it all be unfinished, walked around with an incomplete tattoo, but he had no testaments heralding his inability to finish what he started. He was a completer, though. He completed things. He was a finisher. Maybe.

"I thought about not coming back," Courtney smiled big and stupid, the action taking over his whole face, lighting up his eyes. He admitted, "But I thought I'd look stupid with a half-finished tattoo."

He followed instruction easy, like he had, the last time.

Shirt up, around his nose, mouth, the whole scent of himself encasing his lips and chin, comforting him with familiarity as he settled his body against the cold leather.

The process of tattooing? Courtney had discovered he liked. There was something freeing about being somebody's canvas.

It wasn't the needle or the machine that put him on edge.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse, of course, assumes that Courtney’s reasons for not coming back are pretty self-explanatory. The way the human’s body had reacted to the process the night before, Jesse easily assumes that this particular customer has a low pain threshold. Of course, if that kind of pain is torture, then why come back? Because, like many people, this man would balk at walking around with a half-finished tattoo. He would be the most cowardly of the cowards, and the proof of it would be painted upon his skin. It is commendable, that he should want to come back to finish it off.

Jesse nods.

”I’ll try to make this as quick and painless as possible,” he says. It’s a lie, really. He can’t make it any less painful than it’s going to be. There’s no way he could ever take all of the pain out of getting a tattoo done. The needle still has to break the skin ten million times in order to make the ink stick. But, Jesse can at least move a little faster. Not inhumanly so—just at the pace of a well-versed expert.

It takes a few minutes for him to get settled, to make sure the gloves are in place, to swipe the scabbing tattoo with alcohol and clean the area before he can begin again. No other conversation is required; Jesse still knows what it is that the customer wants, and he gets to work. No questions asked. No judgements uttered. The sooner he gets it done, the sooner he can get out of here.

The machine buzzes to life and Jesse rolls his shoulders. This time, he refuses to breathe. Even though he can see the small droplets of blood oozing to the surface, although they do inspire within him the same frenzied thirst as the night before, it’s not as insistent. It takes a back seat. At least, if he doesn’t breathe he won’t be able to smell it. He won’t be able to taste that scent on the miniscule tastebuds of his tongue. He narrows his eyes, and focuses on the rabbit. He thinks about rabbits. Watches them, from memory, in his head. It keeps him distracted; it keeps his mind concentrated on the job at hand.