A Procession of the Damned: [Jesse Fforde]

[Courtney]

Jesse's canvas is relatively smooth. Tanned neck. Thicker skin. Different muscle structure than the previous work. People and their skin.

Courtney loops his shirt around the front of his chest, sits, and the blazing heat dies down, some, in his belly.

Reach out and touch God.

The heat spreads into his shoulders, but he's not sure why he's embarrassed.

The nervous agitation starts to fade out, replaced by something else, something singular -- the singularity. Reach out and touch God, Courtney Apple.

His mind zones in and out, and he furrows his eyebrows, lets his body settle against the chair, straddling it backwards, the warmth of his shirt still against his chest, the smell of himself, of his cat, safe and warm.

He knows what he's supposed to do, because he's been told what to do. Sit down, move your shirt. He's asked questions, and he answers them, because that's what questions are for.

The collection of words, bringing them all in together. This is the offering plate, pay your dues. A series of sentences rambling, in answer -- coins from fingertips making addable money -- dwindles down to a sharp point on his tongue, that feels just as dumb as every other word, if he hasn't said them, a million times, if he has to think, first. "Yeah." He breaks the dollar word into change, because it's genial. "It's my first."

[Jesse Fforde]

Just as expected.

“Okay,” Jesse says as he retrieves the spray bottle from the desk. At first, his fingers smooth over his canvas. There’s no embarrassment for Jesse. He can feel the warmth of the skin and doesn’t attribute it to some unknown generator within the human. He knows exactly where that warmth comes from. Blood. Blood, spreading through the veins and capillaries. Taunting, tempting. But to remain within this man’s body. At least, not to be withdrawn with fang and swallowing tongue.

There’s the knot. Jesse places the design where he had been instructed; he sprays it with the water, and spreads the water with a clean swap of cotton.

“I’ll start with a small area, directly over the spine. It’s the most painful over the spine. The nerves cluster there, just over the bone,” he explains. “If it’s too painful, let me know, and I can stop,” he says. The way the words spill from his tongue, it’s obvious that he’s said them a hundred times before – even if he has only had his voice back – raspy and dry – for maybe only a year.

He peels away the paper to reveal the glistening design underneath, stark black against white skin. From his pocket he pulls the camera. He prefers the camera. There are no mirrors here, lest some poor soul glance into one and realise their artist doesn’t have a reflection. He takes a picture of the design and it’s placement, before showing it to Courtney.

“Is the placement right?”

[Courtney]

It's drawn out. Courtney listens, and tries not to psychoanalyze Jesse's choice of where to start, but he psychoanalyzes it, anyway, and his shoulders tense. He tries to stop himself, but the reboot process doesn't work. He tries to close his eyes tight to keep his brain inactive, but the pyriform of data explodes past the walls he tries to put up, and slams into his head.

Like a computer, programmed for one task, he weighs possible options, possible motivations, and decides on autonomy.

Autonomy. We'll get the bad part over, first. After that, if you can put up with that, it'll be smooth sailing. Thoughtful, Jesse.

But Courtney knows that the brain produces numbing chemicals.

He's scraped
his knees,
before,
his palms.

He's fallen,
slammed
into asphalt,
dribbled blood and

his
brain
doesn't
smooth
out or

slow
down.

He's had his teeth knocked from his head. Are these his experiences? He doesn't know. Everything descends into the warm pit of his solar plexus. His eyes are closed, then they're opened.

He barely feels the water. He doesn't hear the words, at first. He looks dumbly at the camera, then nods. "Yeah. Perfect," but it's not studied. He doesn't care about the aesthetic of the image. It could be a picture of a goat with a flower crown on its head, and he would nod and say, 'Yeah. Perfect.'

It doesn't matter, anymore, about whether or not it's a rabbit, whether or not the lines are a facsimile.

Maybe the gun scares him more than he thinks.

[Jesse Fforde]

Perfect, the guy says. Jesse hears that word more often than not. He doesn’t know whether people just like to be agreeable, or whether it’s actually a testament to his talent. He would hope that it’s the latter. But he knows there’s always a spreading of relief when he hears it. He doesn’t like to have his artistic opinion questions. He can be stubborn like that.

From here, it doesn’t take him long to prepare the ink that he needs into the small tubs; to release a new needle from its sterilized plastic and attach it to the tattoo machine. The rotating head consists of three small needles, of the first part – a fine edge, for the lines. He’ll swap the needles over later, for when he needs to do the shading.

The last thing he does is pull on a pair of white surgical gloves. They snap into place. Alcohol is swabbed over the design; it does not smudge. All of this is done with practiced ease. Jesse has done this not hundreds of times before, but thousands. He could do this in his sleep.

The pedal for the machine is on the floor. One tap with his foot assures him that the machine is primed and ready to go; a warning buzz, as he dips the needle into the ink black ink. With his foot, he nudges the rolling stool over, and straddles it. He is a man of few words. And he has absolutely no bedside manner at all, sometimes. It’s common sense, right? The machine is buzzing. The needles are dancing their beautiful dance of friction, moving too fast for the human eye to see. But Jesse can see it.

That’s enough to prepare Courtney, surely. He is a grown man. He doesn’t need his hand held.

So Jesse leans over. He applied the needle to skin. And he begins. The needle pommel the skin. They get plunge beneath the dermis, and inject their ink. They seem to stick, for that infinitesimal fraction of a fraction of a second, before wrenching free again.

Blood and ink. It’s all Jesse can smell.

[Courtney]

This must be the way girls feel, when they have their virginities taken by psychopaths or narcissists, when they have themselves dragged in and out of themselves, heaved, burst open -- the initial shock of penetration, the way his muscles tense and his bones ache, and his jaw tightens up -- or when they were pierced and drained clean dry, like those hollow husks of bug bodies left by insides-sucking, predatory toads in ponds. He wonders if anything is real, but can't place his finger on any stability, aside from the tattoo gun droning, hammering against his spine, slow and sure, precise, the mean of metal, the total lack of forgiveness found in the safety of something as mechanical as himself. Was that his opinion?

For a second, his body stays tensed, and, then, one of his legs weakens, thigh relaxes.

His eyes mist over, jaw relaxes, body slumps, and he's not sure if it's euphoria, or not, but his brain goes...

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

He swears he can hear every click in the gun.

White light sputters across his vision, the way a man stutters, the way humming birds wings aren't quite seen. Flash images of trees, quiet places, sounds of birds.

Reality, the gun, bam, bam, bam.

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, buzz.

The sting turns into something else.

His head swims, everything blurring out of focus, brightening, then sinking back in, sharp and pointed.

He can hear his own breath, like he could, in the car, a month ago, when he threw a fit in it, slammed his fists against the steering wheel and beat up his radio. This time, his breath is in an out, smooth, like the waves of an ocean.

His eyes pour salt water, but his body doesn't shudder or sob, or choke in on itself.

His mouth relaxes, and his brain goes quiet.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse begins slow. The ink sinks into the skin and the scent of blood and blackness permeate the air. Jesse’s nostrils flare, and the burn intensifies at the back of his throat. But he ignores it, as he always does; as he has taught himself to do. At least in public, anyway, when there are people around. Witnesses. Especially when at work, when, if he should somehow lose control of his bloodlust, it’s not just himself he’d be implicating, but Micah too.

The canvas relaxes. There’s no indication whatsoever that this tattoo virgin is in anyway disinclined to continue with the pain; so Jesse picks up the pace. He pays only marginal attention to the rest of the body attached to the canvas that he paints with his sharp brush. Instead he focuses on the act; on the art. Every now and again he swipes away the bubbled blood and ink, the excess, which hinders his work if left to drip.

The heightened senses he’d gained as a vampire mean that he can work faster; he can see what he’s doing with higher clarity. The lines are sharper. The work is easier. But he can’t move too fast. The ink has to stick. The needles have to linger long enough over a specific spot to make sure that enough of the colour is absorbed by the skin. Jesse knows this. And he know when it’s done. He knows when to move on.

It takes perhaps an hour to finish the outlines. He rolls over the desk, rolling his shoulders to rid himself of the gathering cramps – of which he suffers less of, these days, and he doesn’t think they’re cramps so much as his muscles settling into stone – to change the needle. To pull from another sterilized pack the seven-pointed needle that he will use for the shading.

“How are you doing?” he asks his customer. It’s a matter of professional courtesy, really, rather than a personally invested interest in the well-being of the man sitting in his chair.

[Courtney]

A matter of professional courtesy twists backwards in Courtney's mind. He's fallen asleep, the way people fall asleep in cars. When his brain tried to drop out of his body, he let it fall, and went with it. He fainted, quiet, and then didn't try to steady himself. His position on the chair is such that he didn't have to right himself to stabilize.

All his weight goes into his collarbones, when he lifts his head.

If you've ever fallen asleep in a car, you know that, the moment the engine dies, the stillness and the silence wake you back up.

That's Courtney, his head lifting, wincing, trying to relax, again. His neck is -- in the way of all paradoxical, defining moments -- sore and numb and distant. He compares the sensation to cigarette burns -- how they hurt, at first, but the pain is less intense, after the introduction, like business meetings, or friendly conversations and cocktail bars, getting to know one another's names.

"There's something wrong with this city," he mumbles, looking off at a wall. But that probably doesn't answer the question. How are you doing?

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse pauses.

He knows there’s something different about this guy. Not that he’s special-different, just different. Like he looks at the world differently, and reacts accordingly. But he is still human, and the comment gives Jesse pause for thought. Jesse himself doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the city – not really. He’s accustomed now to what makes it different to any other city. What this man might perceive as wrong, Jesse perceives as normal.

But is it Jesse’s particular brand of normalcy that Courtney is referring to? Probably best not to jump the gun on this one. So, as Jesse continues to fiddle with the new needle, settling it in place before re-filling some of the ink, he shrugs his shoulders.

“There’s something wrong with every city,” he says. And he’s not being entirely dishonest. There’s corruption and greed in every city. There’s subtle class warfare. There’s bias and judgment, sexism and pollution. There’s something very wrong with the entire world. Not that it bothers Jesse. Jesse’d be open to anarchy, really, though he supposes that’s not really the case. If he were a true anarchist, he wouldn’t be following this thread. Wouldn’t be asking his next question, to determine whether this human knows too much. Whether, maybe, he should snap this guy’s neck right there in the chair.

“But what, specifically, do you think is wrong with this one?” he asks, sliding back over, ready to continue with his work but pausing, in the silence, to wait for the answer.

[Courtney]

He feels sick, drunk, confused. His hand rubs over his face, then goes to his blue jeans' knee to clasp, twist up in the fabric, buckle down, tremble open, buckle down, again.

Everything is blood.

The buzzing's stopped, the numb pounding, the consistent external stimulus -- he's found a new addiction, something that makes his brain quiet, something like smoking, but better, because he doesn't have to stop inhaling to exhale, his skin is not his lungs. They wear their own, distinct uniforms, now, have their own, distinct sensations. He has separated organ from body by method of sensation.

The buzzing's stopped, and his skin is not his lungs, and everything is washed in blood. His nostrils flare. His mouth waters. His head swims, unsteady.

"There's just something wrong with it," and he wants to grasp the back of his neck, like it's a pain in the neck to focus his mind, but he doesn't -- acutely aware that there's ink back there, that his fingers are covered in salt and cigarette smoke residue.

His life is salt and cigarette smoke residue -- the thin grasp of tar that clings to the insides of his body, that he coughs into the cold, as he crosses parking lots, looks at crime scenes.

He thinks he wouldn't mind a cigarette break, but he can hear things clicking, he knows the guy's going to start working on him, again. He thinks he might want to puke, so he covers his face with his shirt, sinks back into the smell of himself and waits for the nausea to pass, even when that thin, cold sweat breaks back over his skin, when something grasps at his stomach, at his throat, claws its insides, drags and whines.

Did you know the artist imbibes his canvas with his energy and focus?

Maybe Courtney should have studied more about tattoo work.

Lesson: Be careful who you let under your skin.

[Jesse Fforde]

The vibrating buzz of the tattoo machine isn’t loud enough to drown out conversation. Jesse normally stays quiet while working simply because he’s used to it. Near a decade without speaking, and travelling through his apprenticeship and his days as a business owner, all had been spent mute. He’d become accustomed to it, to the point that he began to believe that he needed it, in order to get his work done.

Aware the customer is paying by the hour, however, Jesse decides to break his rule. His foot taps against the pedal. The machine begins its low whine. When the needles dip into the skin, they move in circles. More ink. More blood. He isn’t just copying an image. He is making his own mark on someone else’s skin. Such is the ego of the tattoo artist, sometimes – the satisfactory knowledge that one’s art isn’t stuck in some stuffy museum somewhere. Instead, it gets to walk around, flaunted, showed off to the world at large.

“Yeah. Just generally you feel like there’s something wrong, or did you see something to make you think there’s something wrong?” Jesse asks. And his tone has been perfected. The kind of flat monotonous rumble that is one third interest and two-thirds indifference. A mere tattoo artist trying to make conversation to help pass the time; or to distract the customer from the pain.

There’s sweat peppering the guy’s brow. There’s a lack of blood to the facial features; all signs that he’s feeling it. That his body is pumping the adrenaline, that it is struggling against the burn of the tattoo needle. So far, however, Courtney hasn’t told Jesse to stop. And so he continues, mainly focused on the blending, and filling in of the lines – but also very interested in the answer to his question.