Etching Existence
Short Story
“Hold still, alright?” said the tattoo artist. “Your skin’s saggier than my scrotum.”
Louise Whitlam’s wheezing laughter clashed with the whine of the tattoo gun as it fired up.
“I’ll bet not as saggy as my first husband’s,” she rasped, as the tattoo artist began his work.
The first session took a little over an hour, after the initial consultation and explanation of the idea. The tattoo artist — a veteran of the ink establishment that had seen no-one older than the age of fifty ever grace its leathery chairs — was glad to undertake the job. He started with her left foot, and worked his way slowly up her ankle and leg as Louise dictated to him from the battered old diary she’d entered with, clutched under a bejewelled hand.
The sessions occurred on a bi-weekly basis. After Louise had finished the first diary, the tattoo artist had reached the top her first leg and was halfway up her second. It was only until the two were well into the fourth month of the endeavour that the tattoo artist plucked up the courage to ask why she wanted her body tattooed with her life story.
Louise Whitlam stared straight ahead, looking at a poster full of butterfly designs as she answered the question. “They told me I got dementia,” she said. Then she continued to read from her diary as if the tattoo artist had never pried.
They had a six-month break when Louise’s family decided to place her in a nursing home, as none of them knew how to care for a matriarch whose mind was slowly turning to mush. That was when they discovered the tattoos. After a raft of bitter arguments, they agreed to let her continue, but only if a family member accompanied her to the tattoo parlour to keep an eye on her.
Sometimes it was her daughter, other times her son. Grandchildren weren’t often in tow; the tattoo artist presumed the suburban sensibilities held by Louise’ children stopped them from going that far. The routine continued and Louise’ body slowly filled up with ink. It soon wrapped around her toes, her feet, her legs and lower body.
The tattoo artist was nearing the top of her left breast when the first forgetting happened.
Louise suddenly stiffened, and she struck out with surprisingly brickish hands to push the tattoo artist away from her. Her eyes clouded with anger and the creeping loss of memory.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. The entire tattoo parlour went silent as Louise stood up. “What are you doing to me?”
Her daughter leapt to her side, trying to calm her down, but she would hear none of it.
“Keep him away from me!” she yelled, and hobbled out the door with her daughter in tow.
Later that day, she called to apologise for what she couldn’t remember.
“It’s fine,” said the tattoo artist. “When you’re feeling better, I’ll be here.”
When she did, he was, and they continued, though with shorter sessions. From an hour they cut down to thirty minutes, and as more instances of forgetting struck her as she lay in the leathery chair, they culled the time even further. Soon, whoever accompanied her took over dictating from the diary.
That was until they ran out of diaries on her right shoulder blade. Louise was so far gone then that their sessions were a mere ten minutes, and the tattoo artist had long ago given up charging her for his time.
“Well, are there any more?” the tattoo artist asked the son.
The son searched and searched, talking with family members, and even his mother when she was lucid enough, but there were no more diaries to be found. Louise’ recorded life story had ended in her fifties, when she was trekking through Nepal with her second husband.
“We have to finish,” said the tattoo artist. The son agreed, and said he’d try to sort something out.
A week later, Louise Whitlam, consigned to a wheelchair now, rolled into the tattoo parlour with an army of her friends and family. They all crowded around her as the tattoo artist began his work, pitching their memories and filling in the blanks of her extraordinary life. It was the longest session Louise had ever had, even before her faltering memory had begun to hound her. They worked long into the night. The kids fell asleep in the other tattoo chairs lying dormant inside the shop, and by midnight, the tattoo artist had finished his work at the top of her neck, just beneath her chin.
Louise Whitlam, whose entire life was now etched upon her skin, smiled up at the tattoo artist in a moment of recognition and whispered a croaky “Thank you.”
