Ally's Revenge (Part 1 complete, Part 2 in progress)

Chapter 12

*Picture: Google Image search,  random tattoo drawing that is similar to Damien's back piece*

Chapter 12

Ally

"Wow, I needed that," Damien says as he nuzzles against my neck. We cuddled up on the couch, completely naked, and completely spent. Damien is a very attentive and assiduous lover. I feel completely at ease and safe in his tattooed arms. I turn around to face him so I can get a better look at his arms. He has quarter sleeves on both arms that go up onto his shoulders and onto his back, which is completely covered. I can see welts from scars, long and straight like he was beat with a whip.

"How long did it take to get a tattoo this big? I've only seen work like this in magazines."

He sighs and I almost think he completely ignored my question, but after a moment, he begins to tell me. "At the end of my last deployment, everyone was heading back west to come home, but I decided to head further east. I ended up in Russia, making my way through the countryside by bus and hitchhiking, and I came across a man from England. He was a well-known tattoo artist in London but was sick of the city and was heading east to 'find himself', as he put it. We traveled together for about two weeks before we ended up being arrested; it was a small town about a hundred miles outside Moscow, where they had very strict laws allowing them to arrest and detain anyone they suspected of espionage. At first we thought it was a joke, but after a week we started to realize they were serious."

"Wait, this isn't the 60's, they really thought you were a spy?"

"Apparently, and the man from London, Jamie Townsend, turned out to be associated with the CIA, some kind of informant and since I was with him, they detained me as well. We spent five and a half months being tortured: whipped, burned, drowned, and cut. Then another four months in a hole that resembled a well. I thought for sure we were going to die in that hole. Then one day, Jamie had a severe infection in his leg from a cut they inflicted that never healed, they took him out the hole, and I still to this day have no idea how it all happened, but he somehow escaped. Thinking back, they must have thought he couldn't run away since his leg was three times the size it should have been, and he was running a very high fever, but he must have escaped and called for help. Two days later the place gets blown to shit and if I hadn't been in that hole I would have been blown up too. I was rescued and brought to a military base hospital where I stayed for another three months. During those three months was when Jamie started working on my back. He did a few hours here and there, he was not healing and actually lost his leg, and he said the only thing that took his mind off our situation was tattooing. I hated the scars that were left on my back and arms and I didn't want the constant reminder of what I'd been through, so I had him cover it all up."

I trace my fingers over the waves on his arms, at least it looks like waves until you look closer and see it is a sea of bodies, twisting and writhing as if in pain. The waves cover the upper portion of his arms and roll around onto his shoulders, but then they dissolve and turn into clouds and a sky full of angels. The angels are beautiful and fully colored, wings and all, and they are flying down his back towards a sea of demons. In the center of his back is an epic battle of angels versus demons. The detail of the faces, both angels and demons, is so realistic that it looks like a multi-million dollar piece of art that should be on a museum wall.

"Jamie worked on this every day for the last two months we were on the base, and I never saw it until he was finished. People would stop by and watch him work for hours and I knew what he was creating had to be a masterpiece by the crowd that kept gathering. The doctors had released me after the first week, but I stayed for him to finish. When he was finally released, we went back to London together, and he had a photographer take about a hundred pictures, a few of which I have seen in tattoo magazines. The work he did on me made him a legend in the tattoo world. Last time I talked to him, he had so many clients he had to stop taking on new clients and was scheduled solid for the next three years."

We laid there talking, spooning on the couch, for about an hour until I have to break our comfort and use the restroom.

"I'm sorry, nature calls," I say as I unwrap his arms from around me.

"No, you can't go. Not yet," he says while laughing and unwrapping his arms and legs. My left foot is asleep so as I stand up I am kind of limping and hunched over rubbing my calf and trying to walk to the bathroom at the same time. The massive bay window faces the backyard and the river so I'm not worried about anyone seeing my nakedness as I walk across the living room. I had walked about four feet away from the couch when I hear a clink sound, kind of like glass cracking. Behind me, across the room at the wall opposite the window, a picture falls and breaks. Damien comes up off the couch and is running straight at me when I hear a second clink sound. He plows into my midsection and we both go flying across the wooden floor. My naked back hits the hardwood floor and he lands on top of me, sprawled out to cover almost my entire body.

"DO. NOT. MOVE! Not even an inch," he whispers to me, eyes instantly wide and alert.

"What is it, what's going on? It's just a picture falling off the wall..." I reply but as soon as I said it, I knew I was wrong.

Damien crawls back to the couch to retrieve the gun he left on the floor and he grabs his cell phone from his shorts pocket. I'm laying on my back, naked as the day I was born, trying to twist my neck around to see him without lifting myself off the floor. He has the gun in one hand and his phone in the other. He crawls to the big window, staying off to the right side so that he is not exposed.

On the ceiling, I see a reflection, kind of like when you twist a mirror around at the right angle and it reflects sunlight. "Psst...do you see that on the ceiling? What is that?" I whisper to Damien. He must have seen it when I did because he was already looking up and started crawling across the room back towards me.

"It's a scope reflecting the sun. Someone is out there trying to take a shot at you," he says, still not taking his eyes off the window. "They're across the river, no way I can get a shot off with this gun. Stay right there, I'll be back."

"Damien... Wait! Where are you going?" I tried to ask him but he was grabbing his boxer briefs and had started crawling across the floor towards the kitchen, leaving me still laying butt naked on the living room floor.

He reaches the kitchen and stands up on his feet while keeping his back crouched down. "Ally, I hate to ask you this, but I need to figure out where the shots came from. I'm going to my truck then I'm going to your roof. I need you to count to two hundred, saying one-one thousand, two-one thousand... When you get to two hundred, I need you to crawl over to the window and stand up..."

"Stand up while there's a...."

"For two counts, just like the one-one thousand, then either hit the floor again, or step off to the side of the window. If they know we see them, or him, whoever it is, they're either going to move locations or they will shoot everything in sight."

"Damien, I don't know if I can do this..."

"Sweetie, I'm sorry, I'd do it myself, but they're not after me. I would never ask you if there was another way."

"Ok, I'll start counting."

"No, wait until you hear my truck alarm beep. Then start counting. And please tell me this place has a roof access..."

"Um, yeah, there's a door in the garage that's an old servants access that will lead you up to the attic, from there you can go out the window and onto the roof."

He doesn't respond, just leaves me laying on the floor. After what feels like an eternity, I hear his truck 'Beep' and I know that's my cue to start counting.

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