Where to next

Lorelai was sitting on a chair resting her arms on the back of it. Her back was bare and Alina, the tattoo artist, had already copied the template of the tattoo on her bare back. Since the first time she saw a tattoo, she knew that she wanted one too. The first tattoo she saw was a tattoo of a skull holding a rose in its mouth. Something about the skull tattoo fascinated her. She didn’t know what but she felt mesmerized by it.

Alina was a really good tattoo artist and a designer and she had her hands full with Lorelai’s design requests. Lorelai thought out her tattoo to the last detail. It took Alina a month to get all the details of the tattoo right. Because of all the details, the tattoo had to be big, so Alina told Lorelai that the best place for the tattoo would be her back.

The final tattoo design was marvelous. It depicted death’s bust with a skull in a black hood. Behind death was a scythe starting from the right side and ending on the left side of death’s head, with a full moon on the left side of the scythe. The hardest thing for Alina was drawing the centerpiece of the tattoo design, an hourglass from a picture that Lorelai gave her.

Lorelai once waisted in a museum of antiques with her parents when she was a child, and saw a black hourglass taller than her, with breathtaking carvings on the vertical pillars and black sand in the bottom chamber. Some vertical pillars had a dragon, some had skulls and other human-like carvings coming out of the pillars. It looked ancient and had white letters engraved at the top and the bottom of the frame, but the carvings and the letters looked as if they haven’t been damaged by time. The hourglass was a challenge, but Alina captured its essence perfectly with the carvings and letters. She put the hourglass in the middle of the tattoo, under the death’s skull and into its bony hand. Lorelai asked her to put some black sand into the top chamber, just to balance it a little.

The tattooing process took four sessions and Lorelai did feel pain while Alina was working around her bones, but it didn’t matter, she was happy that her dream will come true, that she’ll finally have a tattoo. She was actually glad that the tattoo was on her back, in a place her parents couldn’t see it because they were always against tattoos.

She remembered the first time she told them that she’s going to get a tattoo. It was two years ago, but it felt like two days ago. They looked at her as if she was some kind of delinquent, they both frowned at her and shouted at her that they didn’t raise their daughter that way. It started a big fight between them. Now that she was eighteen, and that she actually could get the tattoo without their approval, she made the decision to get the tattoo and not tell them anything.

After the last tattoo session, Lorelai spent a whole hour just standing in front of the mirror looking at her back. In her eyes the tattoo was perfect and the white letters on the top ‘o vorr dorr aeai’, and the letters on the bottom ‘vhoro da sa mozd’, in the middle of the deaths black robe stood out and elevated the whole design. She was so focused on the tattoo that she didn’t hear someone knocking on the front door. Putting her shirt back on she walked towards the front door and opened it.

Their neighbor Mr. Marcus was standing there rubbing his hands. When he saw Lorelai, he smiled and started to talk about his morning. About how his toaster was acting funny today and how he tried to fix it. She listened to him but wasn’t paying attention. It wasn’t like Mr. Marcus was a bad person, he was nice and friendly, but he was boring. His life was uninteresting, he had no hobbies, no friends and worked at the IRS. After a while, Lorelai got lost in her own thoughts. She got back to reality when Mr. Marcus asked her. “So, what do you think?”

“Sorry, about what?” Lorelai asked.

“About where should I go next.” Mr. Marcus said.

“You lost me there. I don’t know what you mean. Why are you asking me?” Lorelai asked.

“Well, you have to tell me.” Mr. Marcus said.

“Ok. Where would you like to go?” Lorelai asked.

“I don’t want to go back. I don’t deserve that. I would like to go left but I’m scared.” Mr. Marcus said.

Lorelai had absolutely no idea what Mr. Marcus was talking about so she said “It can’t be that scary. Go try it.”

“I think I will. Thank you.” Mr. Marcus said and started walking left. Lorelai closed the door and went to her room.

’What was that all about? Why would I have to tell him where to go? He’s a grown man. And what was with not deserving to go back.’ Lorelai thought as she walked into her room and sat on her bed. What she couldn’t see was that a grain of black sand on her tattoo fell from the top chamber into the lower one.

A few minutes after she heard sirens and, through her window, saw police and an ambulance stop in front and walk into her building. She heard a commotion on her floor and walked over to the front door. She opened the front door a bit and saw the police knock on Mr. Marcus’ apartment. There was no answer so they kicked the door down and walked in together with the paramedics.

Lorelai opened the front door a bit more and saw Mr. Marcus lying lifeless on the floor. She stood paralyzed. ’Did I do that? Did my advice kill him?’ She thought as her heart started beating faster.

“No, he’s dead for too long.” Lorelai heard one of the paramedics say.

“Probably early in the morning.” One of the police officers said holding up a toaster.

Lorelai saw the toaster and remembered Mr. Marcus telling her about it just a few minutes ago. One police officer came towards her and said “Hello, young lady. Did you hear something from your neighbor’s apartment this morning? Was someone other than your neighbor here or did you maybe hear someone scream?”

“No, I was asleep. I didn’t hear anything. What happened to him?” Lorelai asked.

“At first glance, it looks like he tried to fix his toaster but got electrocuted. We just want to check that someone else wasn’t involved.” One of the other police officer called him. “I have to go now. Thank you for the information” The police officer said and left. They put Mr. Marcus’s body in a black body bag and took him away.

Lorelai closed the front door and sat on the floor. Nothing made sense. ’If he died early in the morning, how could he talk to her just a few minutes before the police and the ambulance arrived here? How is that possible?’ She thought as she hugged her knees.

Her mother saw her sitting on the floor, hugging her knees, eyes wide open, and asked. “What’s wrong?”

Slowly Lorelai lifted her head and looked at her mother, stood up and said “Mr. Marcus is dead.”

“Ah, that poor man. Death comes for everyone eventually.” Her mother said.

“Yeah.” Lorelai said and went to her room.