"Time to get up," I hear the robot voice say for the third time this morning. I decide that if I don't get up someone may become suspicious, so I do. I can't think straight I am so tired. Sleep is still tugging at my eyelids. Beckoning for me to come and plummet into nothingness once again, but I know I have to get up. I am so tired that I nearly forgot about my Tattoo, but when I sit up my skin feels raw and almost too tight. Then I remember the pain of the night before.
Something feels wrong. I have heard many stories about the nights people get their Tattoos. None of the stories include pain, not even a little. No one else wakes up because of it. Why was my Tattoo so painful? I ask myself as I walk to my laundry basket, where I place my night clothes.
I make my way to the sanitizer. When I get into the sanitizing room I will look into the mirror for my Tattoo. I am anxious, excited, and nervous to see it. Where is it? What is it? I walk into the sanitizing room.
There are mirrors on two walls so we can see the front and back of ourselves. I first carefully inspect the front of myself. I see nothing. I shrug a little, and I see a flash of black at my wrist. I quickly look down and see black flames encircling my wrist. I smile. They're beautiful, but then I look at the rest of my arm. I have to cover my mouth to stifle a scream. The flames do not only cover my wrist. I raise my eyes to the mirror, and I faint.
I wake about thirty seconds later. I am in shock. I stand and look into the mirror again. Testing the reality of what I saw. This was not a dream or a hallucination. The flames do not only encircle my wrist.
They start at my wrists, both of them. Then they travel up the inside of my arms. They twist back to my shoulders and lick my back. They cascade down the back of my legs. At the center of my back is a simple but beautiful eye. I now see that the flames don't start at my wrists they start at the eye. They come out of the eye and seem to reach as far as possible on all of my limbs.
They seem to grab hold of my shoulder blades and capture my wrists. They reach for my fingers and toes, but they don't quite make it.
I know that this is wrong. Tattoos are supposed to be about two inches tall and wide at most. They should not cover your body. This must be why it was so painful. It had so much skin to cover. I don't know what this Tattoo means, but I will have to come up with something. I know this isn't safe. I can't show my Tattoo to anyone.
I step inside the sanitizer, but this time I don't let it pull me away. I stay focused. I think, and I come up with a plan.
CITEȘTI
Set in Ink
SFTurning fifteen years old was no big deal. Turning sixteen was no different, but when Addilyn turns seventeen years old she will have a Tattoo. No one has ever turned seventeen without the ink that was injected into them when they were a baby makin...
