#some profanity

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When Morgan arrives at his house, it’s like four in the morning. Clooney doesn’t come greet him, nor does he chase him off, and Morgan finds the dog with Spencer in his bed -- because the pipes burst and flooded the room Spencer was staying in. He’s fast asleep, in Morgan’s clothes, cuddling his dog and soft from sleep and… Morgan almost doesn’t have the heart to wake him. Brushes some of his hair out of his face, watches how Spencer wakes gently but not fully, stretching and the long lines of his body curve in a way Morgan hasn’t allowed himself to stare at in a long while. Against his bedsheets.

“Reid.” he tries to wake him, but damn if the boy isn’t a heavy sleeper. “Reid. Pretty boy, wake up --”

“Tooearly,” he’ll mumble rolling a little but not enough and his curls are everywhere and Morgan isn’t sure what he wants to do beyond fall asleep also. And be as warm as Spencer looks.

“Sleeping beauty, either wake up or scoot over,” he teases, and Spencer hums noncommittally, not even questioning why Morgan is there. “You’re hogging the whole bed.”

“NoI’mnot, Clooney is.” The dog looks at Morgan with an expectant stare and Morgan can’t help but grin, enjoying… whatever dynamic this is. This domesticity.

“Well then both of you scoot over.” He rumbles, taking off his winter jacket and soaked socks.

“Don’t gotta answer to you if I’m dreaming,” Spencer grumbles out, curling into Clooney’s fur and dozing as Morgan gets dressed for bed. Usually he doens’t dress much at all, but it’s freezing and… fuck it, he’s about to share his bed with his dog and his best friend who has a serious crush on him so. Clothes.

“You argue with me even in your dreams? I’m touched, pretty boy,” he snickers, then kneels on the edge of the bed about to either pick up and move his dog, or push the both of them all the way over. “Now seriously, move before I move you myself.”

The dip in the bed is Spencer’s first clue he needs to wake the fuck up.

His eyes snap open and he’s pushing himself up onto one arm slowly, hair a mess and Morgan’s shirt half off his shoulder. Lips parted in shock and not sure what to say beyond --

“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to sleep, but someone won’t let me into my own bed.”

--

But every time I returned to the shelter, though I was sad that I had not yet found someone that would permanently adopt me, I told myself stories of the family I dreamed of and how I would know when I found them because they’d just be…well…right.

But my story, or the story I am about to tell you, doesn’t really start here. It starts years later with Jennifer and a woman who will forever be known as The Blob.

The Blob and I didn’t get along. I hated her putrid odor and her gluttony and roiling mounds of fat. She hated me for existing and taking food that would have been hers. I took up space and money that could have gone to more food. Nonetheless, she adopted me.

The reason she adopted me will always be a mystery. I heard that it could have been because she herself had lived in the old orphanage later replaced by my shelter but everyone could see that she had enough problems to deal with. Another rescue like me, no matter how scrawny and tiny, would be a burden on her. And I was. No matter what I tried, I saw the strain keeping me had put on her. It was my existence and her obvious reluctance that made us hate each other. Despite it all though, she was the only person that kept me for longer than six months without returning me to the shelter. She broke my personal record at a year and a half, during which time I was starved and forced to eat whatever sludge she deigned to put before me.

I should hate her, but it was through her actions that I met the beautiful Jennifer, a severely underappreciated secretary.

After I was forcefully evicted from the only home that had kept me for over six months, Jennifer found me. Beautiful, angelic Jennifer. She took me to the doctor, fed me, and gave me a place to stay. And though she meant well, she tried to return me to The Blob.

I don’t think you need to really guess how that went. She didn’t want me. Why would she? She had literally thrown me out not two hours ago and there I was back on her porch with Jennifer.  Something had gotten her into a frenzy and as she yelled at Jennifer, her mounds of fat rolled and jiggled.

“You can’t just leave him on the street to die!” Jennifer reasoned at last, desperation in her voice.

The Blob grunted. It was hard to tell what went through her head as she stared at us with her beady little eyes. “I’m not now, am I?” she had said in a very abrupt and suspicious change of attitude.  “He’s your problem now.”

The door was slammed in our faces and that was that. To Jennifer’s credit, she hadn’t seemed at all bothered by her new “problem” and had taken it all in stride. In fact, she had insisted on taking me back to her modest little apartment and fixing me somewhere warm to sleep.

In the morning I had expected to wake and find that it had all been a very pleasant dream and I was still stuck in The Blob’s house. But no. I had awoken to the smell of fresh coffee, clean linen, and most importantly, food.

Jennifer fed me eggs and some of her leftover steak from a few nights before we met while she got ready for work. When she left, I found her collection of books and began reading. She really had quite a lovely selection of books and I had set to reading them with gusto. All too soon she returned from work and I felt guilty for her to find her apartment in such disarray by my mess of books sprawled out in hideous clutter.

“Are you reading, silly?” she asked me as she straightened the mess I made and petted me along my back.

All the time, I admitted. I always have.

She smiled angelically down at me. “I bet you’re hungry,” she said as my stomach rumbled. “How about some dinner?” I followed her into the kitchen where she pulled out a worn take-out menu from the refrigerator. “I’m getting fat eating from here so often,” she confided to me as she dialed the number. “But they’re so nice and it’s cheap food.”

We fell into a rhythm. We ate breakfast together after waking up, eggs and chicken for me, oatmeal and coffee for her. She went go off to work for the dick of a boss that only thought of her as a nice piece of ass, not as an intelligent human being, and I sat in the living room in a pile of her books or told myself stories. When she came home from work, we cooked dinner or ordered out, then sat on the couch and watched TV. We usually watched whatever movies were on and occasionally treated ourselves to hilariously terrible sci-fi movies. It was during dinner and watching movies that we got to know each other.

I told her about how the caretaker found me in the cemetery and how no one wanted me because they found me too strange. My life had spilled from my mouth during the evenings while we talked and ate. She had listened, only shushing me if an interesting or important part of the movie was playing and we should pay attention to it.

In return she told me of her life, of her husband that had cheated on her with everything that moved since he found her “mind-numbingly boring”. She told me about how she had finally got the courage to divorce him and how he had tried to wring every penny from her as legally possible. Luckily her lawyer had been the better lawyer and he got nothing from her other than her self-confidence and a restraining order. She told me about her job as a severely underappreciated secretary and told me that everyone joked that it should be her actual job title because it was sadly true. Most of all she complained about her boss who treated her as his personal slave. She had been hit on and propositioned too many times and she was completely sick of it.

Just quit, I told her after a few weeks of living with her. You’re obviously very capable. You can do anything you put your mind to. People would be fighting to get you. Just quit.

The next day she did. When she returned home from work, her cheeks were rosy and her eyes glittered with palpable excitement. “Guess what, Stephen?” she said as soon as she saw me. Before I could react, she lifted me from my seat and hugged me tight, pressing my face into her chest. “I finally told that dick-face to go fuck himself. I actually got applause for it!”

I struggled with my surprise and my…ahem…very male response to my face’s position between her breasts. Wow…Jennifer…that’s great! I pushed myself away from her gently so that I could see her face, not the valley between the soft mounds of her chest. While I didn’t really want her to let go of me, I also didn’t really like being hugged. So what will you do now?

She ignored my struggles and kissed my head, high off the adrenaline of her success. “I can do whatever I want now! Come on, Stephen, let’s celebrate!” she dragged me into the kitchen where she showed me the bounty she collected before she came home. Filet mignon and seafood pasta, lamb chops, roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, and a round of Italian tortes. It was a grand feast for two and we glutted ourselves on the abundance.

It was as we lay on the couch, stomachs ready to burst that Jennifer wrapped her arm around my shoulder and sighed contentedly. It was then as I snuggled into her side that I realized my depth of feeling for this woman, my beautiful savior.

Oh yes, I had a very male response to her appearance, but her kind heart had me head over heels. In the weeks I had stayed with her, I had fallen deeply in love with the lovely Jennifer. I loved her wavy blonde hair that fell perfectly around her pale face, her bright blue eyes that shone radiantly whenever she was happy.

As she ate her dessert, she watched me make my way through my own plate on the counter. “You look like you’re finally gaining more weight. You’re not as bony,” she said as she touched my ribs. Jennifer patted my back while I ate and when I looked up at her, she smiled. “You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time, Stephen.”

You’re the best thing that’s happened to me in a while, Jennifer. I replied, licking my lips. I love you, I added impulsively, looking up into her beautiful face. I wanted her to know how absolutely sincere I was, how I would never cheat on her like her ex-husband, or take her for granted like her terrible ex-boss.

She smiled down at me. “Talkative tonight aren’t we?” she asked as she patted my head and ran her thumbs along my cheeks. “You’re so cute, aren’t you?” My heart fell as I tilted my head into the caress. She rubbed my head between her hands and scratched along my ears and back, bending to kiss my nose. That was the last straw, the one that broke the camel’s back. Everything I had denied, that I didn’t want to believe, came back with those words.

For the next few days, I distanced myself from her. I told myself that I knew the truth but slowly I stopped believing it. I began to lose touch with reality and I became distraught, depressed. Jennifer, worried for me, tried to ply me with food and promises of outings, toys, whatever I wanted. I wanted her, didn’t she understand? I wanted her love, to be the only one she loved, hers forever. It was all I wanted, all I ever wanted.

The tricky thing about lies is that it eventually comes back to bite you in the ass. My lies came back during those days as I tried to deny the truth. I told myself I knew who I was, that I was Stephen King, a storyteller and an orphan. I was a dreamer and someone who had finally found a home and someone to love. I told myself that I knew who I was but as the days dragged on, I began to slip further and further away from what I wanted to believe with all my heart and into the unforgiving truth of what I knew. I spent most of the time sleeping, too confused and overwhelmed by everything to even get out of bed. Then it happened. One night, as I slept in the warm nest of blankets and pillows that Jennifer had made for me, I detached completely. My fingers slipped from the ledge and I fell, the reality I had constructed around myself so very carefully unraveling in the awful truth of it.

The pain, the sheer emotional weight of it made me cry as reality changed me back. I forgot who Stephen King the storyteller and orphan was and settled into what he was.

And the real Stephen King wasn’t a storyteller or the man who loved Jennifer with all his heart.

Jennifer is worried about Stephen. Lately he seems…different. Granted, he’s not quite normal, but that’s what makes him so fun. Now he actually seems rather…normal. The personality change worries Jennifer. Maybe he’s sick? Could he be allergic to eggs or chicken? She had heard that it could happen.

“Stephen?” she calls as she enters her small apartment. Stephen doesn’t answer her call and he isn’t in the living room in the middle of a pile of books as he usually is. He isn’t on the couch either, staring zombie-like at the TV. “I have a surprise for you.” She cajoles, hoping he’d answer her.

Movement from the window startles her but it only takes a second for her to realize who it is. She smiles and walks over to the window. There in a sunbeam, Stephen sits in his new favorite spot (as opposed to his nest of her books). Golden eyes blink sleepily up at her and she smiles.

“Did I wake you darling?” she asks, kissing his little black nose. “Look, I have something for you.” He protests sleepily as she moves him, snapping the orange collar decorated with black cats around his neck. “Like it?” she coos, tapping the bell and new plaque. Stephen King only blinks lazily at her and with a sigh she scoops him up in her arms. “What’s wrong? I kind of miss the old you.”

Stephen King only yawns and stretches in her arms. She lets him, rubbing her nose in his chest until he pats her head with his paw in protest.

“How about making some dinner with me?” she asks instead, carrying him into the kitchen.

Ignoring all of this, three hours later, with a red, swollen ankle and a new tattoo, Gladys limped home. She hid herself in her room and with excitement peeled the saran-wrap the artist had wrapped it in. The little hummingbird seemed almost real, as if it was about to fly off her skin at any moment. Gently running her fingers over the seemingly iridescent feathers, she thought she felt it shiver beneath her hand as a real bird would. “I think I’ll call you Loki,” she murmured to it as she limped to the sink to wash her new tattoo. “It seems like a good name.”

That night she hid Loki from her parents and diligently cleaned and lotioned her new friend as the artist had instructed. As night fell and it got darker, Loki seemed to glow brighter. When it came time for Gladys to go to sleep, she realized that Loki had moved. She could have sworn that his wings had been extended upwards as if reaching for the sky but now they were angled downwards as if he had beat his wings.

“Just my imagination,” she muttered to herself as she slipped under the covers. “Too much math can do that.”

Throughout the night she thought she felt a tickling sensation in her leg and when she woke up because of it, she brushed it off as phantom pain. “It’s all in my head,” she mumbled to herself as she rolled over. “I’m just thinking of the needle again.”

In the morning as she was cleaning and lotioning the tattoo once more, she saw that Loki’s wings were once more facing upwards as they had been when she got the tattoo. But she was sure that he had been an inch or to lower on her leg the night before.

“Apparently I can’t even remember where I got my fucking tattoo,” she grumbled to herself as she got ready. By the time she was pulling on her socks, Loki seemed to have moved again. “Whatever,” she grumbled to herself as she covered the tattoo.

At school she resisted the urge to show it off. It wasn’t healed just yet so the skin was still red and raw around the tattoo and that wasn’t pretty. She had to be patient, wait until it was healed and she could show off Loki in his full glory. Until then he had to be a secret. A beautiful secret that she held close to her heart.

In the middle of the day she excused herself to go clean and lotion the tattoo. Once more, she noticed that Loki’s wings were more down than she recalled. “I’m just driving myself crazy with this,” she muttered and snapped a picture of the tattoo with her phone. Tucking the phone back in her pocket and rolling her sock up, she left the bathroom and returned to class.

Throughout the day, whenever she thought that Loki moved, she snapped a picture. “At this rate I can have my own photo album of the same fucking tattoo,” she muttered to herself. “But at least it’s something nice to look at.” By the end of the day she had to restrain herself from looking at Loki or taking a picture of him. Her fingers itched to roll down her sock and show the tattoo off, but her skin was still red and swollen and she wanted the shock value and the raw jealousy at seeing something so breathtakingly beautiful in full effect. Swelling would ruin it.

When she got home from school, she sat on her bed and pulled her phone out. “Let’s see how crazy I’ve been today.” she said, bringing up the pictures of her tattoo she took. Gladys pulled up the first one and waited impatiently for it to load. Bit by bit the picture appeared and she screamed, flinging her phone across the room.

Loki’s wings were folded to his sides and his body had turned until it was facing the camera. Iridescent feathers were ruffled and his eyes glowed red with supernatural light.

“Just my imagination,” she said, laughing nervously. “It’s just a tattoo.” Picking up her phone, she scrolled through the pictures with shaky hands. In all of them Loki was staring at the camera, feathers ruffled. His eyes glowed brighter in each picture. Shaking, she put her phone down on the table and screamed. Loki had moved, all right. He had moved all the way up to her hand and his long beak rested on her thumb. “Oh hey there,” she said shakily.

Loki turned his head to her, eyes morphing into something monstrous. Gladys closed her eyes and draped her other hand over Loki, ignoring the terrified shaking in both hands. “I’m just seeing things,” she said, voice wavering. “This is all in my mind. This isn’t real.” she looked down at her hands on the desk, one draped over the other and whimpered. “This isn’t real,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut again. “This isn’t real,” she insisted to herself and before she lost her courage, she laid both hands out on the desk and looked down and cried out in relief. Loki wasn’t there. He hadn’t been, of course. That would just be crazy. Tattoos don’t move.

But the whole situation had shaken her. She opened her laptop and typed “GhostInk” into Google. The only results she found were for magic books and a Blue GhostInk airbrush tattoo parlor. When she typed in “GhostInk tattoo”, she found only articles about the book from the first search as well as a blog written by a tattoo artist. There wasn’t nothing about tattoo ink and of course nothing about a moving tattoo. On a whim, when she searched “Haunted Tattoo”, she only found a shop in London and stories about a haunted tattoo shop, not a haunted tattoo itself.

With a sigh, she pushed herself away from the desk. “This is ridiculous,” she said, rubbing her face as she stood. “Loki isn’t haunted. I just proved that. It was all in my head.”

Oh, I assure you, I’m very real. A voice whispered and she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. Whirling, she found no one in the room with her.

“Great. Now I’m hearing things.”

You only wish you were. The voice whispered back and staring at the mirror, she found Loki on her neck, but it was a twisted, distorted creature instead of the beautiful hummingbird she had asked the artist for. Its freakishly long talons were extended and its warped and twisted head more resembled a plague mask with rows of fangs than the needle-thin beak it had been. Its flaming eyes dripped dark blood.

Gladys whined in terror as Loki’s grotesque mouth grinned.

“What happened to you?” Carrie hissed to her as she walked into school. “You’re a mess.”

Gladys shook her head, gripping her arms tightly across her chest. Her hair was messy and unkept and her eye makeup was smudged and running as if she had been crying. “Make it stop, Carrie,” she whispered and worried, her friend came closer, wrapping an arm around her shaking shoulders. “Please just make it stop.”

This had gone on for too long. Gladys had been looking worse and worse over the past week or so and Carrie was getting very worried about her. Drawing her out of the hall, Carrie forced Gladys to sit and held her hand. “Make what stop, Gladys?”

“Make him stop,” Gladys pleaded. “Make him stop.”

Squeezing her hands, Carrie knelt in front of her friend. “Who? Make who stop what?”

“He tells me such horrible things. He whispers in my ear all the things he’s done,” Gladys sobbed. “He won’t let me sleep, he won’t stop talking. And when I sleep he shows me what he’s saying and what he’d do to everyone I know, everyone I ever saw in my life.”

Carrie rocked back on her heels and studied Gladys. “Who, Gladys? Who? Give me a name, give me something I can use.” Gladys’ lips remained tightly sealed and she shook her head so hard that Carrie was worried that she’d give herself whiplash. “We need to tell the police, get a restraining order. This isn’t healthy.”

“You don’t understand!” Gladys wailed, covering her ears with her hands. “I can’t get a restraining order! It won’t do anything!”

“But it’s a start,” Carrie insisted. “Who is it?”

Gladys grabbed her hands and squeezed so hard that Carrie gasped. She gulped when she saw how red and crazed Gladys’s eyes were, like one who was demon-possessed. “Not who. What.” She licked her lips and her eyes darted around as if worried someone would overhear. “My tattoo. It’s alive. He’s alive. And he tells me things. He moves and he whispers things in my ears and he says these terrible things to me.” She was gathering momentum now and Carrie was growing increasingly worried about her friend who was squeezing her hands even tighter now. “He shows me too. He shows me the things he’s done and the things he’ll do to you and mom and everyone I know and love and I know he’ll do it if he can but he can’t. He wants me to do it but I can’t, I can’t do that, those things he showed me, I can’t Carrie, and he says he’ll torture me but I just can’t do it. I can feel him now, Carrie, I can fucking feel him moving around on and in me and I can feel him in my mind and in my eyes and moving around my body.” She stopped suddenly but her eyes remained wide and crazed and her eyes squeezed Carrie’s hands so tightly that her friend felt bruises begin to form. “He’s moving.”

“What tattoo?” Carrie asked, forcing herself to sound calm and rational. She didn’t want Gladys to panic and bolt, she needed help.

Gladys took a shaky breath and told her the whole story. How she had seen the tattoo parlor, gone in, met the really nice artist who was also a little scary and gotten a huge discount on the tattoo. “I tried to go back,” she told Carrie. “I tried, it wasn’t there!” she shook their joined hands in her panicked frustration. “It was just an empty building.” Gladys sobbed.

Pulling her up, Carrie looped an arm around Gladys’s waist and ignoring her half-hearted struggling, she led her best friend to the nurse’s office. They left Glady’s alone in the examination room while they spoke in the nurse’s office where they could see if Gladys tried to leave.

Gladys, the voice called and Gladys whimpered, curling up in her cot and slapping her hands over her ears. Gladys, the voice called again and she shivered, feeling Loki moving around on her skin. It felt like rolling a marble over her skin and it traveled along her spine to her neck. She felt him burning there. Now Gladys, remember what we talked about.

She shook her head, whimpering as tears dripped down her face. “I didn’t do anything!”

Oh, Gladys, Loki purred to her. But you did, didn’t you? You talked about me.

“No!” Gladys insisted. “No!”

No good of himself does a listener hear…

Gladys looked around the office in panic, hoping to find something to distract herself from him. Some way to escape. “I swear, Loki, I swear!”

...speak of the devil…

She felt him moving again, rolling along her neck, along her cheek like a disgusting caress, and then on to her hand. Removing her hand from her ear, she looked at Loki and moaned at the sight of the demonic hummingbird grinning at her.

...and he shall appear.

Carrie and Nurse Margaret came running when they heard her screams and screamed themselves when they saw the pencil she had stabbed her hand with. As they watched in numb shock, she wrenched it out of her skin and with another blood-curdling scream stabbed herself once more in the hand. Carrie slumped to the floor, suddenly dizzy while Nurse Margaret and her assistant, who had come running at the screams, held Gladys down by her arms, treated her wounds, and called her parents to pick her up.

Gladys held her bandaged hand to her chest and closed her eyes. She hadn’t heard from Loki in a while, not since she had stabbed her hand. On the way home with her parents, Loki had taunted her uselessness and fear until she had grabbed a knife in the kitchen and tried to slice the skin off her forearm - where he was when they got home. She had succeeded too, in slicing off a good portion of her skin and him and now only his grinning beak and the tip of a tattered feather remained.

Of course, no one believed her when she had told them what really happened. Her parents were furious that she had gotten a tattoo and that she had been so stupid about the shop. But this bout of apparent insanity could not be overlooked and they took her to the local mental hospital. No one believed her when she insisted that she wasn’t crazy, but then again, everyone says that.

She leaned back on her cot with a sigh, kicking her feet up. “It’s not so bad here, I guess.”

I quite like it here, Loki said from the door. He smiled when she screamed and blood dripped from his grinning mouth, full of overlapping teeth. It stained the floor as he walked toward Gladys, who was frozen in horror on her cot. No longer was he a hummingbird tattoo, now he was a tangible thing, a demon with a gore-filled mouth and flaming eyes. Except that with no one else to play with...I guess I’ll just have to make do with you.

Carrie missed Gladys, but being in the loony bin would be good for her. Something was obviously not right with her and she knew they’d sort her out. But as much as she missed Gladys, she completely forgot about her friend when she saw the little tattoo parlor. She was sure that earlier that morning it had been an empty street corner, but then again, she was preoccupied with missing Gladys that she probably didn’t even notice.

Something about it - and its seemingly spontaneous appearance - drew her in, made her more curious about it. The sign above the door read BLAK KAT TATS and next to it was a very sassy-looking black cat with big golden eyes. As she watched, it seemed to wink at her.

“Just my imagination,” she murmured distractedly and before she could think of a good reason why, she opened the door to the shop. The startling lack of a bell shocked her but the artist seemed to know that she was there regardless. Maybe he had seen the motion of the door as it opened and looked up to see what it was.

The man smiled, highlighting the tight scars on his face and as he offered a hand for her to shake, Carrie noticed the intricate tattoo sleeve he had of a demonic skull with sunken eyes. “Welcome to Blak Kat,” he said as he took her hand. “Can I interest you in a tattoo?” when she opened her mouth, he held up his other hand. “We have two great deals right now. 50% off on all tattoos for the Grand Opening and all that and you can get an additional 50% off if you want me to use the GhostInk.”

Carrie smiled, somehow feeling drawn to getting a tattoo. Maybe a black cat, like the one on the sign? It seemed sassy, and just her style. She noticed the second tattoo on the artist’s neck as he bent to pick up his sketch pad from the chair he had been working in. It was a hummingbird, so vibrant and colorful she was momentarily surprised, its wings arching upward as if reaching for the sky.