The Canvas

1- Ezra

"Are you sure you want me to do this?" I ask for the hundredth time. This is something that she'll have to live with for the rest of her life. It's important that she's 100% on board.

"The longer you wait, the more scared I get," she complains. Her face is pressed against a pillow, so her voice sounds muffled. I look at her unmarked skin. It's smooth and I am so scared of messing it up. "Come on Ezra. You know I want it." Hovering over her, I keep my hands as steady as possible, I rub my fingers against the green soap and apply it to her shoulder- it'll make the stencil stick. Her skin is cold, but she doesn't have goosebumps.

"Tell me if it hurts." I make sure that I align the stencil as straight as possible before running ink through the needle. Of course, I've tattooed many people before. When I got my initiation tattoo, it became somewhat of an addiction. But, this will be Charlie's first tattoo and I don't want to fuck it up. With the first line of the needle, I notice this delicate feeling of her skin. I've never tattooed a woman before, it's always only been men that I work with. "You good?"

"I could do this in my sleep." One thing about Charlie is that she hates needles. That roots from her dad. He always had a problem with them. She saw the effects they had and was scared the same thing would happen to her. So, she hides her face back into the pillow to drown out the sight.

"It's pretty small, so it shouldn't take me too long." I try to bring her some comfort, any comfort I can. How are you supposed to get rid of someone's fear of needles when they watched their dad shove them up his arm for a high? No one can; it's permanent damage. "I'll let you give me one if you want." Tattoos are scattered all over my body. One more would go unnoticed.

"I'll leave the tattooing to you." She's lying on her stomach with her shirt off so that I can put a book on her shoulder. She's lying on her stomach with her shirt off. I'm trying to focus on the art, but she's a tempting canvas.

"You know, you're the first woman for me to tattoo."

"What, the Advocates don't have any women members?"

"We do, I just don't tattoo them. You stay a lot more still than some of the guys."

When she places her head back down, I resume tattooing. "My Uncle Rainer has a friend who's looking for an apprentice, so I gave him some of my work to look at." My uncle says that having connections is the most powerful thing a man can have.

"That's great Ez. He seems legit though right?" With power comes consequence. Powerful men are surely feared but that makes them a bigger target for the other powerful men- no one is ever safe. And when you're in that type of situation, you become involved in a lot of shady things. Charlie knows about that.

"Yeah. Someone he met in college." Through drug deals but he really does seem trustworthy. I don't think I'd be getting into something I didn't sign up for.

"Just, be careful." Charlie is a worrier. Her problem is that she expects everything to go bad. And when it doesn't. She takes that as a sign that something worse must be brewing.

"I always am." I finish the last touches on the book tattoo. "Done." She shoots up excitedly, nor caring that she's in her bra. It's hard not to look when it's in front of you, but I force my eyes to my equipment.

"Get a mirror to help me see." She's twisting her body, trying to see her shoulder through the standing mirror in the corner of the room. I reach for a hand-held mirror and hold it up so she can view the tattoo clearly. There are all types of stickers surrounding the standing mirror and by her right cheekbone is a sun sticker hit by sun coming in from the window. Charlie radiates. She feels like waking up in the morning, fully rested with the sun beaming on your face as a sign to get up for the day. "I love it," she says genuinely.