AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Mason
Conor, Rian, and I all had our different styles of tattoo. Conor was all black and white and symbolism and pain here and more pain. Rian was our experimental guy: any and all styles were welcome. And encouraged.
Me, I liked big and bold. The bigger, the bolder, the better.
We also, the three of us, had different ways that we worked on our different styles. Conor worked best with churning grey clouds and a bottle of whiskey. He liked peace and quiet because there was more than enough shouting in his head, I was sure of that.
A tornado could have been sweeping through Dublin and if Rian was drawing (or even just staring at the wall) he wouldn’t notice. Not even as he was lifted up from his drafting desk stool and carried away to Oz itself.
And then there was me. I was the distractable one. I got most of my best work done in the middle of the night in bed because there was no one around. Not many sounds. And little to vie for my attention.
I say all this to explain why later that day, as I was supposed to be sketching out a design for a new client, I was really watching the boys eye each other across the studio, straining to hear what they were whispering in the kitchen over tea that I was not invited to, trying to figure out what the fuck was up with them. By mid-afternoon I had gotten no work done and was going insane.
“Alright,” I said at last, throwing down my unused pencil, “someone spill it.”
Conor sipped at his whiskey and glanced over at Rian, who was pretending—badly—
to be engrossed in his half-finished painting of a young woman with dark hair and striking eyes; when Rian was really painting he looked lost, like a little kid, wide-eyed and distant. Even Aurnia ducked out of the room under the excuse of “emptying the trash”, something she despised doing now that she was a tattoo artist “like us”.
“Well?” I said. “Did someone die or what?”
“Oh God, I hope not,” Rian said to the ceiling.
“And that means?” I pressed irritably.
Conor cleared his throat and set down his glass. A second later he picked it back up and drained it in one go. “Look, Mason, it’s just…we’re a little…worried is all.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Worried?”
“Yeah,” Conor said, looking over to Rian for support, who looked back up at the ceiling when I caught him spying on me. “Yeah, it’s just that, you know, we hear things. Down here. When you’re with your, um, lady friends. Your Miss Last Nights.”
I nodded along, not understanding where this was going at all. The most unnerving part was when Conor blushed. Actually blushed. What the fuck was going on?
“We get that you’re into some kind of kinky stuff, you know?” Conor continued. “I mean, who isn’t?”
I beamed proudly at my drafting desk.
“And?” I said, chin raised.
“And there’s nothing wrong with that,” Rian finally joined in. “That bondage stuff. That rough sex stuff. We all like a little choking and such from time to time.”
Choking? Well, this took an interesting turn.
“Maybe we can hurry along to the point, boys,” I said.
Conor and Rian looked at each other. I could practically hear them silently shouting at one another, “You do it. No, you do it. No, you do it.”
“Rian, you say it,” I said with a bored sigh.
“Did you kill Miss Last Night during sex last night?” Rian finally blurted out.
I burst out laughing. My laughter died when I saw Conor and Rian’s concerned faces. It died when I noticed Aurnia peeking her head around the corner from the kitchen, eyeing me.
“Look, man,” Conor said. “You know we’re with you through thick and thin. We’re family. God knows you’ve been there for me through some tough times of my own, but really mate, if you fellas were having fun and the fun just went a little too far, you’ve got to tell us.”
The tattoo parlour was dead silent as I dragged my hand over my face.
“It’s just that we haven’t seen Miss Last Night come down and there’s underwear on the stairs so we know someone’s up there and there’s been like no sound, like at all, all day and, and Miss Last Night is always, always gone by now,” Rian was saying, sounding more and more panicked. “So something has to be up, right? What’s the story? Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I’m not sure I can handle a dead body.”
