Inked Scars

Tattoo One-Skull and Crossbones [sarena]

Chapter One: Skull and Crossbones

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WHEN GIRLS ARE AT THE AGE OF FIVE, they learn to share their imagination through scraps of paper, lousy markers and stunted pencils. They typically expressed themselves in sessions of doodling either feminine stick firgues with their Ken boyfriends (orange crayon skin, pink convertibles and all), drawing princesses and the other ludicrous characters which could only be found when you looked in the dark corners of said five year-old's mind. When girls are at the age of five, uneven petaled flowers and semi-circle suns are often laid nestled on the top left corner of the page.

When Scarlet was five, she drew out crossbones, gun ammo and canon balls.

She was not your typical five year old girl.

While her friends in nursery school were gushing about the latest Barbie movie or Dora the Explorer episode, Scarlet took it upon herself to take out her infatuation with Pirates of the Caribbean, which inarguably is still her favourite movie up to this day, onto sheets of paper, utilizing her crayons in drawing Johnny Depp with his dreadlocks and handsome oval face (as back then, cheekbones were not understood to their fullest potential), along with the skull and crossbones featured on the DVD case.

Even though it is difficult to pinpoint when exactly Scarlet realized that she viewed the world of art very differently from the majority of her generation -- that she had interests beyond the charcoal of paper or pencil -- she believes this simple distinctive moment to be one of the biggest milestones of her art career.

Albeit she has an incredible sum of 43 tattoos gracing her body from abdomen up, she commemorated this very milestone as her first tattoo: which, ironically enough, is a skull with dreadlocks and a crossbone with criss-crossed lines, all in pink ink.

Just like the drawing she used 22 years ago.

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HER FIRST INTRODUCTION TO TATTOO'S would be the parlour her Uncle Hunter used to put her to wait in front of when she was younger. Her uncle was young and impulsive, like the Bob Saget of her family, the Uncle Jesse in their "Full House" -- the chill man with a god complex and a thrill for the masculinity of dead skin, potent beer and leather jackets, even when people were stripping off clothes because of humidity.

In her dirty blonde pigtails and ill-fitted puffed dress, crayons and shirts clutched in her hands as tightly as her uncle's hand, she didn't fit into the theme at all. But, strangely enough, the place began to feel like home. While her parents were reluctant to give her up to the off-rails family member, she adored him too much for protest.

She adored the princely charisma that made him a ladies man, the youth built up in his rigid muscles and the cool, cool drawings of a really nice bird painted on his left shoulder that she would catch a glimpse of when he's rolling up his sleeves. She loves everything about him, from his musky scent to the long bearded friends that he hung out with, even if they could be a little weird.

Scarlett would sit in those huge, leather chairs, feet barely scraping the tiles underneath her stature, gazing endlessly as she heard the drills buzz as they brought another creation to life.

"Uncle Hunter," she squeaked the first time she saw the needle, "do you really need to put that into you to get a pretty picture?"

Her uncle would chuckle, leaning back in the recliner beside her. "Sure thing, sweetheart. But I promise it won't hurt. They'll numb it."

She'd wrinkled her nose then, shaking her head. "I won't ever get a tattoo. I'll make do with watching from now, but I'm never putting a thousand feet sharp thing into my skin for fun!"

"You're smarter than most of these wise men, little girl," the old tattooist doing his thing would reply to her, smiling that yellow toothed grin that she learned to find solace in.

Uncle Hunter would pat Scarlett on the head when she lifted her chin in pride. "When you get your little pictures drawn onto your body, don't think of it like an injection."

She'd give him an odd look. "What am I supposed to think of it as? An umbrella?"

"No! A paintbrush. You know, like the set I bought you for on your sixth birthday."

"But it's nothing like a paintbrush."

"Sure it is!" he chastised. "Except the only canvas you'll have to work with will be your body. You'll be drawing your own art on your body, and that's priceless."

"But I thought my art was worth gazillions, Uncle Hunter."

"U-uh," Uncle Hunter stammered, before recovering his wits to continue. "Yes, but portraits with this paintbrush are more valuable."

"Really?" Intrigued, this little girl pushed herself higher up her chair, looking up to her uncle that seemed so much like a brother to her.

"Really," Uncle Hunter said. "Because these portraits all have a special meaning only you will understand."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know how I have this bird imprinted onto my forearm?" He pulled up his shirt sleeve, as if Scarlett hadn't burned the image into her memory. She nodded. "This bird means freedom. I got it when I was 18 because I finally got to be an adult and I was very proud of that."

"Why would you be an adult when you could be a kid like me? I get free ice cream if I puff out my cheeks enough."

"... That is a very good question. Maybe I should get an ice cream tattoo."

"That sounds like a very good tattoo, Uncle Hunter."

Uncle Hunter laughed, and he laughed a genuine, belly laugh because this little angel he had next to him was truly one of a kind and he wouldn't have had her any differently. "Sweetheart, what will your first tattoo be about?"

She'd scrunch up her nose, even though she remembered the drawing she drew up the other day, of a skull and crossed bones. But she doesn't tell him this. "When I get one, you'll see."

Uncle Hunter just ruffled the little girls pigtails. "I'll be right by your side squeezing your hand when that happens, kid."

But as she laid on the table, contracting muscles -- pain, pain, fvcking pain -- sweating and gulping arithmetically, she squeezed but all she caught was air, because he broke his promise and he wasn't there. And as the whites of her eyes began to stay longer, she realized, he never will be.

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Sarena calls this a scene! Onto Tyler's amazing writing next! Thank you for sticking around, everyone! c: