Duncan had screwed up again. Broken the promise he'd made to his wife that he'd not land up in prison again. He'd promised her he'd stay clean and he'd messed up – for the second time. It was worse now, because he had a daughter, Poppy, to think of as well, not to mention the little brother or sister she was due to get in about eight months' time.
You're a dad, now, he admonished himself. You should know better. You have a family. You should be acting responsibly.
He waited and hoped all day that Abby would use the visiting order he'd sent; that one of the officers would come and tell him he had a visitor – but she'd meant what she'd said the last time, that if he got in trouble again, that was it. He would never see her, or Poppy, again.
He only had himself to blame.
He could have evaded capture. He could have brought one of his tattoos to life. A lion, or a wolf, or a dragon. Yes, a dragon would have done the trick. Barbecued the police officers and then flown him home. Yet, if he'd done that, he would have been on the run for the rest of his life. There'd been no shortage of witnesses. They'd recognise the tats, even if they didn't remember his face. He'd done the right thing.
It had seemed like a joke at first, that weird guy who'd offered tattoos like no other. He'd been attracted by the idea of 'special ink' which would obliterate the tats featuring his ex-girlfriend's name and the gang he'd left, and the mistakes, the really awful tats he'd got when drunk. It was the strange guy or Tattoo Fixers. He didn't want his mistakes broadcast on TV, so he'd made an appointment with the strange guy.
The man had described his ink as 'organic'; Abby was always going on about how everything should be organic. Plus the guy had been good. His designs were colourful and realistic, and they had the desired effect of blotting out all the mistakes.
Abby hadn't been overly impressed at first. While she was glad the name of her predecessor was no longer emblazoned on her partner's chest, she thought he'd gone a bit too far. 'You look like someone's doodle pad, Duncan,' she'd commented. 'You didn't need to get that many. You look like a freak.'
All the same, it hadn't been a deal breaker. Poppy had been conceived that same night.
The following day, the weird guy had called him. 'How are the tats?' he inquired. 'Any problems?'
'No, they're still awesome.'
'That's good to know,' the man had said, but Duncan had felt sure he sounded disappointed. 'You have my number. Don't hesitate to call if you have the slightest issue with them.'
He couldn't have known that the tattoo artist had been especially delighted to have attracted this particular customer. Duncan had been the only one to get the special organic ink. It would have been wasted on anyone else. It looks as if it's been wasted on this one, too, the tattooist thought, with a sigh as he put the phone down. Still, you have to take a punt sometimes, if you want results.
Duncan thought it was a trick of the light at first. A wolf drawn in ink on your arm cannot wag its tail. An inked owl cannot blink. Smoke cannot come out of the dragon's nostrils. It had to be an illusion: that or he'd been drinking too much. He turned off the light again and fell asleep.
In the morning, he looked at his inked body again. It looked as if his skin was crawling – literally. The tattoo of a woman, the one his wife had frowned at, was moving. The ink flowed across his skin as if it were alive. It seemed to flow off his body and onto the bedclothes; and there she was. A woman in lacy underwear, as real as if his wife was lying there. 'What the hell...?' he exclaimed. This was not good, especially when he heard the front door open and close, signalling that Abby had returned from her mother's. She was going to come up here and find him in bed with another woman. A woman who couldn't be real, but looked real enough for Abby to be fooled.
'I don't know who you are, or how you got here, but you need to go,' he hissed to the woman.
She shrugged, and before his eyes, faded to look like an animated drawing, in 3d, then 2d, which flowed back into position on his body, just in time.
'Are you all right?' Abby asked, coming into the room. 'You look as if you've seen a ghost.'
'Bad dream,' he said. Perhaps that was all it had been. A realistic, vivid nightmare. He just had to lay off the booze, and perhaps start going to those AA meetings again.
Duncan consoled himself for several days with that thought. Until it happened again, as he was driving home. This time it was the snake which came to life, slithering off him, onto the passenger seat, then onto the floor between the seats. Shaken, he pulled into a lay-by. He was awake enough now. It was really happening, and this time there was a potentially lethal animal hidden in his car. Would it bite him? If so, would it kill him?
It did neither, but did as the woman had done and returned to its position, coiled around his arm. Was that why the guy had kept calling him and asking about the tattoos? Had he known this would happen? Was hallucinating after the application of organic ink a common problem? The man hadn't called now for several days. He'd never left a number.
Duncan turned the car around and drove straight to the place where he'd got those tattoos. The place was boarded up. The weird guy was gone. Perhaps hallucinating after getting the special ink had turned out to be a common problem, and the health and safety people had closed him down.
What to do now? He had no clue. All Google could offer was animation artists who could 'bring your tattoos to life'. Figuratively speaking, only. It didn't look as though anyone else was having this problem, or if they were, they weren't admitting it.
He lived in fear for weeks that it would happen when he wasn't alone; that someone else would witness it and freak out. It didn't happen – the horror only occurred when he was by himself. He soon found that he could concentrate on one part of his body, and the tattoo which was there would be the one to move. He could arm himself with the sword, or produce the lion or the eagle, right there in the living room. The creatures would obey simple commands, like fetching things, and returned to tattoo form when Duncan ordered them to. He could control them. He didn't know how, or why, but it became evident that unless he wanted one of the inks to come to life, they wouldn't; and when he wanted them to vanish, they would.
Even so, living with this peculiarity was a strain. Not knowing why it had happened to him preyed on his mind. Anger at the weird man for leaving him this way festered and burned. He'd stopped calling just before the problem had started.
One day, he took Poppy, aged three, to the fairground. She'd been entranced with the colourful, moving lights and delighted in getting her face all sticky with candy floss. She'd been watching the merry go round with wide eyes when Duncan had spotted the tattooist, beyond the painted, dancing horses, plying his wares on a mobile stand.
It wasn't a good time, not when he had Poppy with him; but he had to know what had been done to him.
'Stay right here,' he said, placing his daughter on a bench. 'Don't move, and don't talk to anyone until I get back.'
She was still hypnotised by the merry go round, and he trusted her to do as she was told.
Duncan sprinted up to the stand, where the tattooist was handing change to a girl he'd just inked with a butterfly on her ankle. 'Remember me, Buster?' he growled. 'We need to talk.'
'Ah. So it did work, after all.'
'What do you mean by that? What did you do to me?'
'Like you said. We need to talk. Come with me. I'll explain everything.'
The man led him to a trailer at the edge of the fairground, and ushered him inside. 'Drink?' he asked, waving a bottle of whisky. 'You might need it.'
'All right. So out with it. What did you do to me?'
'I tattooed you, like you wanted.'
'I didn't want tattoos that move off my body. What's all that about?'
'It's the organic ink.'
'What about it?'
'You know about quantum physics and alternate dimensions, right?'
'I've heard of it. What does it have to do with me?'
'All those things on your body – they exist in an alternate dimension. The ink on your body is their gateway to this world. You can summon them.'
'Are you telling me everyone you ink has other-worldly monsters attached to them?'
'No. Only certain people. Those with the potential to be able to control them. I don't often have customers who have that potential. It doesn't always work, even with those who have it.'
'Have what?'
'There are people with special abilities. Genetic variants, I believe you call them.'
'You mean superheroes?'
'That's exactly what I mean.'
'I'm no superhero.'
'You sure? A whole lot of genetic variants never even know what they are. They either never discover their talents in the first place or if they do, they just think they're merely remarkably good at something. Are you remarkably good at anything?'
'Well... I'm strong. The weightlifting coach at my gym said he'd never seen anything like it. He was going to take me on, get me into the Olympics, but I ended up in prison instead.'
'That'll be it, then. There's your power. Only a genetic variant would have a chance of being able to summon the creatures. That's why you got my special organic ink and your mates didn't.'
'You could have stuck around to explain all this.'
'I did. I called you, remember? I thought it would happen more quickly. I'd got to assuming it wasn't working; that your variance wasn't conducive to it. Most aren't, you see. I assumed they were just regular tattoos. I was wrong. I apologise.'
'Any more of us out there? People with live tattoos?'
'I only ever met one other variant it worked for. I had a commission for a time with this organisation called the Vipers. They have a viper tattooed on their wrists when they're recruited. I did a few. If you see anybody with a Viper on their wrist, keep well away from them. They're lethal. Oh, and don't ever admit you know that. People have been murdered for less. Point is, there was this one guy I inked during my time there, whose viper comes to life. Kind of handy for an assassin.'
'Well, I'm not an assassin.' He drained his glass. 'I'm an ordinary guy, trying to be a family man... Oh, shit! Poppy! I have to go...'
He raced back to the bench where he'd left the child. She was gone.
He looked around wildly; there was no sign of her. Anything could have happened. Someone could have abducted her, or she might have wandered off and come to grief. He spent the next hour scouring the fair, calling her name. She was nowhere to be seen.
His mobile phone buzzed in his pocket. He took it out. Abby. He couldn't face talking to her right now, having to tell her he'd lost their child. He let it go to voicemail as he kept on looking. He couldn't talk to Abby until he'd found Poppy.
He widened his search, looking along the path, among the trees at the edge of the park, the street. He looked in every pub, every chip shop, every kebab place. Poppy was gone. He should never have left her.
At midnight, exhausted, he sank onto the bench where he'd left her. Why, oh why had she not done as he'd told her? He'd have to tell the police. He'd have to tell Abby. He picked up his phone, and listened first to the message. Through the string of obscenities directed at him down the line, he pieced together what had happened. A policewoman had come across Poppy, sitting alone on the bench. She'd asked Poppy where her parents were. While her father didn't trust the police, having served time, Poppy's mother had taught her you could trust the police, and if a policeman or woman asked you to do something, you did it. When the policewoman had said she was going to take Poppy home, the girl had gone with her.
The policewoman had shown up at home with Poppy and told how she'd found her sitting on a bench at the fairground all alone. Abby was fuming. Poppy may be safe, he thought as he hailed a cab, but I'm in shit as deep as the Mariana Trench.
'What in hell were you thinking?' Abby flared the moment he opened the door.
'I had to see a man about... about something.'
'What? A man about a dog?'
'A tattoo.'
'You have more than enough of those! Even if you didn't, that's no reason to leave your child on her own!'
'Poppy was fine. She knows not to move, not to speak to anyone. If that copper hadn't shown up, she'd still have been sitting there when I got back.'
'Are you telling me you've done this before? Left her all alone while you went off drinking? Don't deny it. I can smell it on you!' Duncan bitterly regretted accepting that one glass of whisky from the tattooist. 'There's just one reason why I'm giving you another chance and not taking Poppy and walking out of here right now.'
Duncan looked at her. 'What reason is that?' He expected her to say something along the lines of having nowhere else to go.
'We're having another baby,' she said. 'So I'm giving you one more chance to wake up and be a better father.'
'That's wonderful, Abs,' he said, taking her into his arms. 'I'll do better, now. I promise.' He'd got answers, of a sort, from the tattooist; there would be no need to chase after the guy again.
Only the next day, when he'd told the lads at work, they'd insisted on taking him to the pub to 'wet the baby's head' even though Duncan had argued that it was only a clump of cells the size of a peanut and he wasn't sure it even had a head yet. He'd had too much and got into that fight.
When Abby didn't visit, he called her. 'How are you?' he asked. It occurred to him that perhaps Abby was being sick constantly like she'd been when expecting Poppy and that was why she'd not visited. 'When are you going to bring Poppy to see her dad?'
'You're not fit to be a dad! Poppy and I, and the new one, will be better off without you!'
'I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again.'
'Too right it won't. Poppy and I are leaving. I think it's best if we spend some time apart.'
'You can't mean that.'
'I can. I do. We are out of here. Prove to me that you can be responsible and we might come back.'
He tried. After he'd served his time for the fight, he'd returned to a silent, empty house, full of resolve to prove to Abby that he'd changed. He would have sworn in court that he'd tried; but Abby had more influence than he would ever have imagined. Without her, without Poppy, the temptation to go to the pub was irresistible. Staying in of an evening with a wife and daughter was nice. Staying in eating microwave meals for one in an empty, lonely house was not. He told himself he'd get a decent meal at the pub. That was true enough, but you could also get booze. Lots of it.
The inevitable happened. He got drunk; he got into a fight. He hospitalised someone. He was lucky the charge wasn't murder. He was still on licence from the last time, so he was sent straight back inside. Abby wrote this time and told him she was divorcing him. She wasn't going to tell him her new address. She'd already changed her mobile number. She wanted no more to do with him.
Three years, an anger management course and a lot of counselling later, Duncan was free again, but for what? He did a few online searches for his family. He found Abby on Facebook, pictured with Poppy and the little boy he'd never met; whose name he didn't even know. He sent a message to say that he was out, he'd done the courses, he'd sorted his head out, how about another chance? She blocked him.
He found solace for a while in the arms of his living tattoo. She didn't say much; but she did everything he asked. However, after a few weeks, he began to feel the whole thing was creepy. There had to be a better use for these creatures.
He soon found it. Wandering the streets, there were ample opportunities to defend those weaker than himself. He became a vigilante of sorts, stopped drinking, got a steady job and kept it. Sadly, there was no way to communicate any of this to Abby.
There were times when he wondered if it was worth the effort, staying off the booze and doing good. It wasn't going to get him his family back, and he didn't want any other women, or any other family. Some days, black moods descended on him, and it took all his considerable strength to stop himself from walking into a pub to drown his sorrows.
On one particular day, he mused that he wouldn't need booze to drown his sorrows, or, indeed, himself. It had been raining heavily since the day before; the river was swollen, almost breaking its banks as he trudged home from work, his hood pulled over his head and his hands deep in his pockets.
He might never have known there was a problem if the little girl on the opposite bank hadn't screamed. Duncan was sensitive, now, to calls of distress. The scream told him something was wrong, so he stopped and looked to see where the scream had come from.
The girl was about the same age as Poppy must be, now. She was blonde, though, and Poppy was brunette, so he knew it wasn't her. Not that it mattered. He didn't ignore any call for help these days.
She stood on the bank looking at the raging river. It took Duncan a few seconds to work out what the problem was, but then he saw the puppy as it tried, unsuccessfully, to climb onto a floating plank of wood. Duncan briefly considered leaping into the water to rescue the puppy, but, despite being a strong swimmer, he knew he'd not be able to reach it before it was swept away, and he could easily be swept away himself. This was a job for one of his tattoos.
The dolphin on his left leg came to life and leapt into the water. It seemed to know without Duncan saying a word why it had been summoned. Moments later, it was back, nosing the puppy onto the bank, where Duncan could pick it up. It was whimpering and shivering, but seemed miraculously unharmed.
Duncan made for the bridge, and crossed to where the puppy's owner stood. 'Your dog seems okay,' he told her, 'but you might want to get a vet to check him over, just in case.'
'Th-thank you,' the little girl said, before running off and vanishing into the driving rain.
Duncan headed home, yearning for a hot bath and a meal, satisfied that he'd done his good turn for the day. It was only when he turned on the local news a couple of hours later that he found out someone had filmed the entire incident from one of the flats on the riverbank, and had posted it on YouTube. The sight of a dolphin tattoo coming to life, saving a puppy and melting back into ink on someone's leg had made it from there to the national news. Someone in the local area had recognised Duncan and so his name was there on screen as well as the image.
When the phone rang, he hoped it was Abby, having seen his act of heroism, was calling to say she was coming back. It wasn't. It was an old man with a slightly cracked voice, who called himself James. James asked a lot of questions about the dolphin, about his background and family; but most significantly about what he was doing now – did he have a purpose in life?
He almost told James it was none of his damn business, but something stopped him. He didn't have a purpose, not really. Could the mysterious caller offer him one? Some way of taking his mind off everything he'd lost?
Hence, a week later, he found himself in Birmingham, in a pub. For once, he didn't drink, but waited for two people James had said would meet him there – Russell and Loretta. They turned out to be a striking pair, indeed. Russell was almost as muscular as Duncan was himself. Duncan remembered the tattooist mentioning superheroes before he'd rushed off to find Poppy. Loretta was tall and mysterious, with a greenish tinge to her black hair. They soon confirmed that they were actual superheroes and belonged to a group of them, called the Freedom League. They wanted to offer Duncan a place on the team. He didn't have to think hard at all. He resigned his job the following day and moved to their Birmingham HQ.
He hoped the Freedom League might know who the mysterious tattooist was, and how his creations worked, but even though they had a database of all known variants, superheroes and villains, not even James, a veteran superhero in his eighties, had ever come across anything like it.
Now Duncan had a purpose, a training regime, which meant he no longer felt the need to drink. He was somewhat older than most of the group and found himself becoming a mentor of sorts, advising the younger superheroes with their everyday life problems. He surprised himself with the depths of his insights into human behaviour and why people acted as they did.
He hoped that one day Abby would find out what he had become, and come running back; that he might see Poppy again and meet his son for the first time; but she never did.
The pain of that would never leave him; but he was part of something now, the Freedom League family, and he was certain of his place in it.
New Year New Reading Challenge?
I can help. Here are links to books which meet potential criteria:
A title with three words
- Death and Faxes
- Killing Me Softly
- Settling the Score
- Secrets and Skies
- Over the Rainbow
- Closing the Circle
A title with six words
A book with a number in the title
A book with a colour in the title
Short story collections/A book with a green cover
A book published in the last year/during lockdown
A book you can finish in a day/A book under 200 pages
A book featuring characters from a deck of cards
A Book set during Christmas
A book with a place in the title
A Debut novel
