[ WP ] Philosophical Horror

`` Close your eyes. Relax, it'll help.'' 
 
 I obeyed. The needle touched my skin and I tensed up, the sharp needle moving slowly up and down my arm, piercing, painting. `` So, what's the weirdest thing you've ever tattoed?'' Stupid. She probably gets asked that every time. 
 
 She giggles anyway. `` Do you mean the content or the position?'' 
 
 I could feel heat rising up into my face as I realized what I had asked. `` I mean content. Like, Nazi stuff or something.'' 
 
 `` Oh, well I've never had to do Nazi work, but I have done some crazy stuff like *outrageously* bad art that they wanted me to replicate. One guy came in with a hand-drawn picture of his mother and he wanted me to do an exact replica of it.'' 
 
 `` It was bad?'' 
 
 `` I almost did n't do it. I do n't want people to think I do that kind of work, y'know?'' 
 
 The needle stopped and the pressure vanished. I could hear her sneeze. Something wet landed on my face. I was laying prone, and I *almost* shot up, but instead I froze. She'd sneezed right in my *face*. It felt like somebody had taken a water-bottle and sprayed it all over my face. Did she see it? Would she get angry if I said something? She was doing my tattoo, I did n't want to upset her. I could feel my skin flush with disgust, my skin itself practically stretching and screaming to get away from the horrible discharge of this beautiful woman. 
 
 `` So, what made you want to get this tat?'' 
 
 Lord have mercy, she did n't know. She *did n't know*. How could she not have seen it? I almost responded but then realized that the little bit of spittle that rested so precariously on my upper lip could fall in. I tried to settle down, tried to think of something else, tried to think of the beautiful woman in front of me mere inches away piercing my skin after she had just discharged bodily fluids upon my unsuspecting face -- I had to leave. I had to stand up and walk away. What about the tattoo? It was only half-finished. Wait, she had asked me a question, right? I tilted my head back so that the spittle on my upper lip could roll back and away from my mouth. `` Oh, just something I thought of.'' I shut it quickly and tilted it back down only to realize too late the horrible mistake I had just made. 
 
 With the momentum of my movement, the spittle came rolling down my upper lip with the speed of a fat child at a buffet who has just finished his main course and is now ready for dessert. It rolled into my mouth and I almost screamed. My body shut down. My arms went limp besides me and I heard the needle stop. I was dying. I was n't going to make it out of this alive. I had to say something. 
 
 `` You alright?'' Her voice was soft and the question was loaded with concern for my well-being. 
 
 I grunted in response and moved my arm back into position. The needle resumed and I could feel the needle, feel the pain but the pain was nothing, the sharp pain of the needle was nothing as within me my spirit churned and I tried desperately to escape this world, tried desperately to escape onto some other plane of existence, but I found nothing. I had a strangers spittle, a strangers bodily fluid in my own mouth. My body was no longer my own, and I could feel my soul fighting my body as it struggled to leave, struggled to depart from this contaminated shell of a human being. 
 
 I could feel a drop of sweat rolling down my forehead. Was that sweat or more spittle? Was she hovered over me, wet, sloppy saliva slowly dripping from her mouth? I could picture her, I could envision her with every conceivable inch of my imagination just *standing* there, her pretty little head poised just above my decaying body as she waited, waited, *waited* for more saliva to drip out. 
 
 I whimpered, and she patted me reassuringly on the shoulder. `` Almost done, champ.'' 
 
 I tried to explain, tried to tell her, show her that I was n't whimpering because of the needle, no, the needle with its sharp point and invading ink was nothing compared to this, this complete torture, this murder of the soul. 
 
 I finished, soon afterward. I opened my eyes and when I looked upon her I saw not a beautiful young woman but a monster. A monster who had taken the soul of a man and had rendered it useless, helpless, dirty and filthy. I mumbled a thank you and left. I left a changed man. I left, and as I left, as I looked back at the smiling and waving monster, I knew that I would never be the same again.
