The Shifting Tattoo

I feel it before I manage to see it and almost drop the coffee cup into the sink. I could nearly mistake it for the scald of the too hot water if it didn’t run up my forearm instead of down. It is rather precise as well, like tiny piranhas biting their way along the thin paths, very artistically. And when I look down – there it is. Or better say isn’t. Parts of my tattoo gone, vanished without a trace.

I turn off the water and carefully pat my left forearm dry with a towel. Then I stare at what is left of the image. It never disappears in blocks – rather particular lines of the tattoo are erased to give it new meaning. They are different every morning as well. Like a post-it note somebody leaves on my skin. The thing is – however I rack my brains, I can’t find any sense in it.

Originally my tattoo is very abstract – a labyrinth made of polygons put in perspective with extra geometrical patterns, like Mayan stuff, along the polygons’ sides. Some of them look like barcodes too. But it isn’t an inscription, not even a real picture. It has always reminded me of those 3D optical illusions, even though I knew it wasn’t one. Perhaps, that’s why I’ve been looking for a meaning in these disappearances.

The stinging continues and I gawp as more and more lines fade and… Wow, now they also shift. It looks like something is crawling under my skin with an attached ink cartridge and sucks ink in or secretes it. I bring my forearm closer to my eyes, almost ready to poke the little bug inside. You see, I’ve never witnessed it before – it was simply waking up in the morning with my tattoo transformed.

The door, with its spring missing, bangs behind me. A loud yawn and heavy footsteps announce the entrance of Aksel, already in his shoes and suit, exuding the overly sweet aroma of his perfume. My husband plants a dull kiss on the top of my head, then sees me staring at my tattoo.

“You are not thinking of cutting into it to see what’s going on down there?” he asks with a grim chuckle.

I feel like throwing off his arm he wrapped around my shoulder, but Aksel is already on the move to the coffee machine. It’s been now two weeks, but he doesn’t look concerned. After he took me to the doctor, he paid little attention to the whole matter, apart from an occasional wisecrack about the progress of my body art. You see, the doctor told us it might be the result of my new pills regime to counteract the recent bouts of low mood. “They sharpen the perception to the point when… well, you might think you see or hear something. But you don’t. And with this intricate design of your tattoo, I am not surprised it looks different every time.”

But I am not imagining it changing. Another crawl under my skin only proves it. Could it be Aksel’s prank? Like some smart paint. It wouldn’t be past him to try and “cheer me up” in this weird way – to enhance the work of the pills, he’d explain. Or should I say – wouldn’t have been. I don’t think he cares much to go into all the troubles now. He thinks I don’t know about Ms Pink Cardigans in yellow Mercedes Smart who drops him off at the end of the street every time he “has to” stay extra hours in the office, while he says he had an extra pint and couldn’t drive so took the bus. Wait, maybe he would go into all the troubles – to drive me insane and make the divorce a simple matter. I scratch the tattoo vigorously.

“Don’t brood too much. Remember, you wanted to go for a walk and take some pictures for your inspiration portfolio. The client won’t wait for that portrait background forever.”

Aksel takes his filled travel mug and walks out of the house, jingling with the car keys. I quickly consider asking him for a lift, just to see how he would act, because I am sure Ms Pink Cardigans needs to be picked up on the way to the office. They have a schedule for that car-sharing. But I am not dressed and made-up yet, and frankly I don’t have the energy for the portfolio thing today. With Aksel out of the house and the tattoo changing in bright daylight, I might be able to fathom something out.

I go into the attic room, which is a cramped space with a bit of everything. We tried to make it into a studio for me, but the skylight gives the wrong illumination. Then Aksel wanted it as his game room. When he didn’t use it enough, we added some bookshelves and a worn-out armchair. Then things simply started to pile up there – all our hobbies and pastimes the passion for which gradually faded ended up here.

I push the boxes aside and drag the old armchair straight under the skylight, leaving scratches on the wooden floor. For hours on end, I sit there in the shifting light and look at the lines appearing and disappearing. This dance seems meaningless to me until a particularly sharp pain causes a burst of colour around the new lines. The mixture of a throbbing ache against the purple background, which only accentuates the lines, reminds me of something. It is as if in the coloured tattoo I finally see the 3D illusion. In bursts of sounds and emotions, like comics frames changing, memories come back.

I stood over a limp body of a man in a suit just like Aksel always wears. The face of his years-long business partner and friend was not lewd or smug anymore. And his cock was very much limp as a pull of blood gathered underneath him. I had enough of being forced to and being shared, like it was nothing… like I was a thing.

I sat in front of a commission of psychiatrists, whose verdict would go to the judges. Their choir repeated to me Aksel’s statements about my so-called creative moods and passion swings and the whole case being me simply getting jump-scared by Antoine. Because surely I knew him for years; Aksel’s friend and partner was a regular guest in our house, blablabla. I wonder why none of the detectives paid too much attention to the fact that the whole business with its recent profits went to Aksel afterwards. They were all too focused on the unstable wife. So convenient.

I lay on the couch in the tattoo parlour, a few hours before they would run a comprehensive therapy, consisting of, as I was told, various medications and brain stimulations to help me get back to normal. I had withdrawn all my savings from the bank account and came to this place, where they offer something out-of-the-box. Nanotech Retrospect Tattoo. Basically, a way to inject an image of your previous self under your skin. I didn’t realise at the time, when I asked them to make it abstract, I would require all these years to remember things. That the comprehensive therapy would erase so much I would stare at those polygons for hours questioning my sanity when tattooing them on my skin.

I relax in the armchair and lift my face to the last rays of sun, as the nanobots under my skin continue delivering their message. I still have to fathom out why it came to me right now. Was it Ms Pink Cardigans that nudged me to think of infidelity and doubt Aksel’s character? To stop ignoring other telltales? Perhaps, it was the fact that he will come out unscathed once again, get a new life, dump me, since I survived my usefulness and proved I am not going to talk. I almost wonder what he has in store for Ms Pink Cardigans. But that is not my problem.

Aksel. Antoine. The judges. The jury. They all saw me as a feeble piece. I look at the tattoo. I guess at one point I was. After all, I let Antoine and Aksel play with me for so long. But I inked those memories onto myself for a reason. I peer around wondering what out of all this junk would be useful by the time Aksel returns home.