Author: Anonymous

I’m celebrating my birthday with my family out in the country when I get a newsbreak about a string of robberies at various 7/11 convenience stores in southern Cali that result in multiple deaths and widespread chain closure. For some reason I feel it’s my fault, even though I would never dirty my hands with such actions.
I move on with my day anyway. Mom takes grandma, my husband, daughter and myself out for Mexican food for lunch. Then later, after my brother gets off work, we all head out to my brother and his partners farm so the kid can have her first legit horseback ride. The horse Rambler is a beautiful white sweetheart, and he treats my lady with care as she walks him around the grounds, she absolutely radiates happiness and I’m so grateful that my family was able to facilitate this experience for her, and having the day turn out so beautifully somewhat eases my existential dread that everything is my fault.

After spending the bulk of the day removing furniture and carpet from the bedroom, at 3 I’m able to extricate myself to get an early start towards my birthday tattoo.

The girl I was visiting I’d actually been drawn to her prints early on, I had even purchased one for our friends wedding a few years back. Now I get to meet her in person over a different medium in her studio of residence at Mashroom.

The space is very open, once you finally find it anyway. Some wild murals decorate the space with various can do quotes. And as I walk in a small pixie girl younger than me ,wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and long skirt immediately greets me. She compliments the chameleon on my left shoulder before handing me the paperwork to get started. We discuss the Stranger Things finale, and she tells me her theory on Eddie, based on her experiences with D&D when a character fiting his description dies by bats but returns as a vampire to Slay the dark wizard later on. I admit though I find Eddie charming I felt the role as more of a dark mirror. As my 17 year old self that was dating the 23 year old metal head navy vet that played in pharma just because I thought he was charming and had a good voice. I felt the space of Chrissy a bit differently but I tell her I enjoy her version better.
Unlike my other guy, this lady is a silent worker. She puts on Stephen Kings It for her audiobook of choice on earbuds while I listen to the pop playing in the background and the various studio conversations.

There’s some nervousness when a man shows up at the door that they don’t recognize, but he’s just lost.
The girls bring up one of their coworkers quite a bit who sat for a six hour session yesterday and was fine until after hour 5 when she started asperating and later threw up . They talk about the handfuls of clients that cancelled last minute recently , another girl is talking about how she wants to set up her spider web.

My lady works on my forearm for about an hour and a half before revealing a lovely little mushroom with some kodama buddies from Spirited Away around it.

As we’re chatting before I depart, I show her a picture of my back piece and she calls over the lady that’s been training her to show here. I get a brief interrogation on the time that it took total, the number of sessions, and how long I sat. My longest sitting for that one was 5 hours just for the outline.

After they’re done asking about my other artist, I exchange payment for services. For me, this was a great deal, her flash for 175 and I knew ahead of time she’d perform quality work, plus it just felt like a good season to play around with some fungis.

A futile text exchange occurs.

I used to need concrete evidence

To dispell the rumors in my brain.

You stocked all the evidence in shelfs

And I went through each bin six hundred thousand times

Only to want more proof, more candid examples

More overarching themes.

But one day, my lips quivered and my heart plummeted

And I saw my truth shatter around me and awaken

A sad little girl.

Now that sad girl is just thankful

To have been blessed with good friends and

Staggering and sometimes hurtful

Proof.

Now that small girl closes the door.

Now she doesn’t look back.