The Raven Tattoo

Lisette proudly looked at the raven tattoo on her forearm with a smug smile. It was only three o’clock and she’d already had three tattoo compliments that day. The raven was small, but vivid and lifelike, about the size of a quarter, shown in profile as if staring at something happening near Lisette’s left elbow.

She’d wanted a raven tattoo for weeks, since hearing that song about a sobbing raven at that club where she drank vodka tonics. She couldn’t get the image of a crying raven out of her mind. She saw it huddled under a sad willow tree, in an abandoned cemetery, crying its raven eyes out like a desperate outcast.

Trent had argued against it. “It’s bad luck,” he said, making a peppermint licorice mocha at Mochanation. “The raven’s a creature of dire omens and evil portents.”

“Says who?” Lisette stopped wiping down the counter to listen.

“Says anyone who knows anything about symbols.” Trent used his most maddening, condescending tone. “You clearly know nothing about dark birds and their related mythic motifs.”

“I don’t care. I just like how it looks,” she answered in a stubborn whine. “Plus that sobbing raven song was cool. ‘Cry on raven, cry on.’”

“Jesus, Lisette. You’re as shallow as a bacterial petri dish.” Trent shot her an impatient look with his somber grey eyes. “Aren’t you familiar with Native American belief systems? They thought ravens could possess people.”

“So? What do they know?”

“Uh, a lot. They lived with those birds for centuries.”

“Oh, my God! It’s just a freakin’ tattoo. It’s not like I’m joining a cult or something. It’ll look totally cool, right Lupe?”

Lupe glanced over from the register, where she was barely paying attention. “Oh, yeah. Super cool. I love tattoos. Especially the skull ones.”

Trent shook his head. “You’re out of your minds. I wouldn’t want that thing touching my skin. Nowhere near it.”

Trent’s attitude made Lisette so angry she stomped out to the parking lot on her next break and called the Ink Slinker tattoo parlor. “When can I get a raven tattoo? I want the creepiest raven you got.”

It was a broiling hot Thursday afternoon when she made it to the Ink Slinker for her appointment. Hogan, the tattoo artist, was a burly bald man with a tattoo of a fat, coiling snake on his neck and a sleazy showgirl on his right forearm.

He opened a catalog and turned to a section of raven images. “We got cawing raven, raven in flight, the raven at rest, raven on the tombstone, raven with human skull, raven with raven skull, raven with human skull and eyeball, raven eating eyeball, raven eating rat…”

One of the ravens jumped out vividly to Lisette. She pointed at a small image of the bird with a strangely glowing red eye. It spoke of keen watchfulness, crafty survival skills and bloody encounters with wild rats. As she stared at the tiny pupil, the eye looked so lifelike it seemed to move from side to side. “I want this one.”

Hogan raised an eyebrow skeptically. “The Watchful Menace? That bird’s got the darkest vibe in the whole book.”

“Yeah, it looks cool.”

“I don’t know about cool. Some of my artists won’t even ink that one. Just putting it on someone’s skin makes their skin crawl.”

“Come on, it’s just a raven. It looks dope.”

“Yeah, just a raven. Like John Wilkes Booth was just a disgruntled voter.” Hogan glanced around the shop. A few customers were getting large skeleton and pirate ship designs inked. He looked back at Lisette darkly. “You want this raven, come back at closing time. I’ll do it then. When it’s empty.”

“What are you talking about? You said you could do it now.”

“Not this one. Come back at ten.” He looked at her sternly, like a judge warning a repeat offender for the third time to stop molesting the parking attendants.

Lisettte gave a frustrated sigh, slumped and said she’d see him then.

She spent the day counting the hours away, impatiently shopping for black dresses and scribbling sketches of ravens on the hunt.

When she finally returned to the deserted shop that night, Hogan was still reluctant to do the tattoo. “You sure you want that raven? How about the one with the black moon instead?”

“Just do it!” she urged. It was her first tattoo and Listette didn’t know what kind of pain to expect. But she was determined not to show Hogan any discomfort. When it started, she thought she’d never felt anything so intense. As it went on, she almost blacked out. She imagined the dark raven sweeping over her, covering her head with enormous wings.

For the next few days, she couldn’t stop staring at the raven. It was the first thing she looked at in the morning. When it was time for bed, she gazed at it soulfully for several minutes, contemplating what all the ravens around the world were doing at that moment. She looked at it so long that the raven invaded her dreams, appearing in long nightmares in a world where massive ravens ruled dark, rocky canyons, with small, frightened creatures running madly across the ground to escape the dominant birds.

During the day, she held her forearm out as prominently as possible wherever she went, giving the raven maximum visibility. She flaunted it in front of customers at Mochanation, telling exaggerated stories of how she’d argued with Hogan to get it.

Trent rolled his eyes when she told her elaborate stories. “Hogan knows what he’s talking about. One look at that raven, and I knew it was bad news.”

Over the next few days, the raven became the focus of all her conversations. She made the circuit of her favorite thrift stores, juice bars and vaping shops, flashing her tattoo liberally and soaking in compliments. The raven was just the tattoo she’d needed, adding that new exotic dimension to her life.

She was huddled over a chocolate croissant in a dark corner of a small café late on a Thursday night when she first saw the raven shift position. Or at least thought she saw it. With the bad lighting and her eyes bleary from low caffeine intake, she decided it was an illusion.

But when she finished her cup of tea and poured a refill, the raven shifted again. The movement came with an itch or prick of pain on her arm. She wanted to scratch but held back to avoid potentially irritating the bird. The pain grew more intense, until she was squirming in her seat and the bearded man with spinach crepes at the next table started looking anxious. She got up quickly without finishing her croissant, rushing into the night.

Over the next few days, she caught the raven moving several more times. She was on the bus, hanging on a strap, when its little beak quickly opened and closed. She didn’t hear any raven sounds, but the bus was so noisy, any caws would be lost in the bustle. Then she was getting her nails done and as she held her hand out, the raven turned in a flash, as though to see what was happening with her hand. The movement was so quick and smooth she wasn’t sure she’d seen it. She almost asked the manicurist to watch the tattoo, but when she started talking the raven stopped moving. He simply stood and stared in the opposite direction as usual. Then at night, when she was restless and couldn’t sleep, her arm poked from under the covers. She felt a twinge and strained her eyes, seeing odd twitches of movement, then finally saw it was the raven, flapping its wings, but standing in place. She tried to rest, but whenever she closed her eyes, the wings appeared in her mind’s eye, flapping on relentlessly.

This restlessness went on for several nights. She tossed and turned, watched the raven flap, then lay back unable to relax, glaring at the glowing white numbers on her smartphone.

After a fourth night of this, she was struggling to make it through breakfast, ready to head back to bed, when she noticed the raven wasn’t in its usual place on her arm at all. She stared at the space blankly. It was back to its pre-tattooed state, as raven-free as possible. Then she caught a dark moving speck from the corner of her eye. Her large white coffee mug suddenly had a dark splotch on it. Looking closer she realized the splotch was not some stain or discoloration. It was the raven tattoo, the same shape, the same deep black shade, but now plastered on her mug, like a sinister sticker.

“What?” She thought she heard the word in a small creaking voice come from the mug.

“What?” she asked, her voice rough with the early hour.

“What?” came the sound again, louder.

“What?” she repeated forcefully.

“What are you looking at?”

“What are you doing on my mug?”

“It’s a lot cleaner than your arm. Ack ack.” The raven made what sounded like a caustic laugh at its rude remark. Its beak moved in tandem with the words and its garish red eye seemed to blink.

“You’re supposed to stay on my arm.” She was irritated and angry at the tattoo, even though she knew being angry with a tattoo didn’t make any sense.

“You don’t own me,” croaked the raven.

“What are you talking about? I paid for you. With my own money. Of course, I own you.”

“That was a deal between you and the tattoo guy. I had nothing to do with it.” The red eye seemed to glare at her more aggressively.

Lisette was too tired to keep arguing with the tattoo. She decided to ignore it and continued gulping her oatmeal.

After appearing on her mug, the raven slowly grew bolder and more adventurous, appearing at spots further and further from her arm. It showed up on the refrigerator, snidely reeling off the names of her energy drinks. It slowly glided across her Daenerys Targaryen poster, making a guttural laugh. It even sidled around late at night during her work shift, flitting over the screen of the Mochanation cash register.

She warned the tattoo, telling it to stop leaving her arm without notice. But the inky raven ignored her, seeming oblivious to her interference. It mocked her, appearing on her dingy living room curtains, cawing at her unkempt bed and messy closets, screaming from the dusty, torn window screens.

As the days wore on, the tattoo grew more insolent, more rebellious, more impossible to manage. Lisette swore she saw it hugging the side of her vodka bottles when she wasn’t looking, somehow imbibing the three-dimensional liquid into its flat form.

One night, the tottering raven reeled and stumbled across the wall like a dissolute, drunken vulture spewing out random insults and invective.

“Being on your arm’s an embarrassment,” it griped. “You’re nothing but a big bundle of low self-esteem and social blunders. So many times I wanted to crawl up your arm and give you a piece of my mind. You think it’s easy, staying quiet while someone’s screwing up so bad every day?”

“Stay away from my mind, raven,” Lisette warned, her sense of alarm rising quickly. She glanced around her apartment, but didn’t see anything to use as a weapon against a raven tattoo.

She jumped. A blotch of black had appeared where she didn’t expect it. The raven was on her shoulder. Its single eye glowed an angry red. Its sharp beak jittered open and shut as it spoke. “You need my help. You must have it. Why else did you summon me?”

A sense of panic entered Lisette’s voice as she eyed the door. Was it better to run out in public where she might find help? Would a friendly stranger be willing to take on her tattoo? “Summon you? What are you talking about? I didn’t summon you. The tattoo artist made you!”

The raven chuckled. “He only does what he’s told to, honey. You ordered a raven. You called me into being from the void of nonexistence.”

“I never called you into being. And don’t call me ‘honey’.”

The raven continued its persistent march. It moved to a low part of Lisette’s neck, where she couldn’t see it without running to a mirror. “How’re you gonna stop me, honey? Me and the loud beak go together. It’s a package deal.”

Lisette wiped at her neck angrily, desperate to smudge the raven or distract it. She ran into the building’s shabby hallway, with its mustard-colored carpet and bad duck paintings. “Stop it! What do you want from me?”

“What any raven tattoo wants. To have a good life together. Where you go, I go. But you gotta take my input once in a while. Ain’t it fair I get some say so?”

Lisette rushed out of the building onto the bare, concrete courtyard with its two potted ficus trees and rusty tricycle. The street was nearly deserted. Only an overweight deaf neighbor sat on his decrepit porch, obliviously reading a graphic novel. “You’re insane. I’m going to the tattoo parlor this minute. It’s laser removal time!”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” The voice had a new, threatening tone, louder than before, coming from someplace closer.

Lisette thought she felt the bird move silently up her cheek. She ran for the carport, nearly tripping on an old burger box and Big Gulp cup. “Yeah, you’re scared now, aren’t you?” she taunted the raven. “You don’t wanna get erased.”

“I’m not gettin’ erased, honey. I didn’t spend all this time lounging on your smelly arm just to get wiped out. I’m going where that lousy tattoo hack can’t get at me.”

“Can’t get at you? What do you mean?”

“Deep in your brain.”

“That’s impossible!” cried Lisette.

“What is?” The new voice came abruptly, from a person. The elderly apartment manager had suddenly appeared in front of her, holding a dribbling hose and a bag of potting soil.

“What?” Lisette was startled. She couldn’t deal with the doddering manager now.

“What’s impossible?” the manager croaked, hose wavering in her hand.

“Nothing, nothing. I’ve got to go.” Lisette darted for her old Dodge Hornet.

The manager yelled after her, wild-eyed. “You can’t drive in that state! You’re all shook up.”

Lisette ignored her, jumping into the Hornet. She backed up so quickly she nearly hit the old woman, then slammed on the gas. She tore from the complex, making a sharp right up the narrow street, swerving to avoid a rotted watermelon.

“Now you’ve done it!” The raven’s voice was even louder than before.

Lisette checked her reflection in the rearview mirror, frantically looking for the bird on her face. It was nowhere to be seen.

“You left me no choice,” it went on, voice reverberating as if in a small chamber. “I’m going through your ear canal, straight to the brain, sweetheart.”

“No! No! Not the brain!” Even as the raven made the horrific statement, Lisette knew it was true. The strange echoes of its voice could only be coming from inside her own skull, bouncing off the enclosing walls of her head.

“Yes,” the raven went on, in a dark, implacable tone. “I’m imprinting myself on your gray matter, sinking into the well of your thoughts. You’ll have no choice but to hear me squawk away, every day and every night.”

“No! I won’t let you!” Lisette stared in panic at the road. How could she thwart the raven’s hideous plan? Where could she steer the car to interrupt its devastating rampage? Would a shocking, sudden crash unnerve it, halt it, shut down its ruthless march?

“Now we’re one mind,” crowed the raven, as if reading her thoughts. “Our thoughts twine together, like we’re a single being. You and I, closer than a girl and a raven have ever been!”

Lisette screamed “No!”, wildly scrabbling at her hair with one hand. She shook her head frantically, as if to somehow dislodge the crazed bird by sheer force. But as she gyrated madly, her Hornet swerved and hit a deep pothole. The car jolted, knocking her left hand off the wheel. Screaming in terror, she lost control of the creaky Dodge. It careened across the street into the path of a huge, speeding Amazon delivery truck.

The powerful truck plowed into the skittering Hornet. The car flew up, landing on its side and rolling with a series of tumbles into a massive intersection. A pair of long zero-emission city busses and a full garbage truck slammed into the disabled Hornet, finally sending it crashing into a gas pump at a corner fuel station. The pump exploded in flames and the Hornet instantly became a raging inferno of slathering fire, growing ever more ferocious until it consumed everything on that side of the station.

At the Mochanation that night, Trent stopped in mid-pump while making a Black Cherry Mocha Freeze. “Hey, what happened to Lisette? She didn’t make her shift.”

Lupe shrugged. “That girl’s a trip. She’s probably drunk at some Goth show.”

From a porcelain tile on the wall, a small raven tattoo chuckled softly.