Cockroach County

Sandra pulled her top over her head. She unclasped the baby-blue bra. Her nipples had big areolas that flooded around the tips of her boobs. The tips of her boobs were cone shaped rather than round. The pink color was so light that it almost camouflaged with the skin tone. Her face had the demeanor of an office visit and was saying: "I know this is a professional visit and a normal part of the procedure, nothing sexual at all." Both guys were quiet, not smiling, and looked at them keenly.

"Okay, I'm going to carefully lay it down now. You have to hold still. We have to do this very slowly to avoid any creases. It's a pretty large tattoo."

Atticus took the clear top right corner and pressed it down on the left shoulder. With the left hand, he tucked on the diagonally opposed corner, while his right hand gently patted down the foil to her skin, gentle at first, then firm to get the adhesive to stick. His fingers stroked out from the center, running a little over the edge to her skin, and accidentally brushed on her nipple. Her flat, placid nipple came to life. Like a tower, the nipple rose and pulled into something skinner. The edge of the areola around the nipple puckered together into dimples. A soft blush of rouge rose on her cheeks.

"I'm sorry that it's so cold in here. I can get you a blanket," fussed Atticus.

"Oh, it's not that. I'm just ticklish," blushed Sandra.

With the base of his fist, Atticus circled the stencil to transfer the design onto her skin. Sandra's boobs jiggled a little. She bit her lips. He pulled off the adhesive. A clear outline of the tattoo remained on her skin in crisp, sharp black. He poured a little ink into a small glass container. He changed out the needle, put a new plastic cover over the needle, and snapped on black latex gloves. The needle machine buzzed for a test run. He covered her nipples with blue surgical paper-type sheet covering for modesty.

"Okay, I'm going to show you what it feels like by tattooing you without ink on the other side. That way, you won't jump when I'm going to start for real. You wouldn't want a straight line across your chest, would you?" warned Atticus.

Sandra gripped the end of the full-length arm rest. There was a little enlargement just for this purpose. The needle lowered onto her right pec. A relaxed smile came across Sandra's face. "That's not bad at all. It's kind of like tugging carefully on a Band-Aid until it becomes loose."

"Once we get to your collarbone, it'll be a lot more sensitive," warned Atticus.

Sandra opened the bottle of Wet Virgin Party and, holding it by the neck, took a big swig out of it. "I'm ready."

"What's there to do for fun?" asked Randalf.

Putting the first black line down, face close to the needle, Atticus replied, "We have a really cool cave river! There is a mountain half hour out of town made from limestone. A river goes in on the north end and comes out on the south end. The water dissolved the lime stone. It's dangerous but the local kids right it down. I've done it once. Part of the ride, there is air to breath. However, there are stretches where the river goes completely underground. You have to hold your breath for a long time, like you think your lungs are going to burst. It's quite dangerous because once you go in, you can't swim out against the current. You are fully committed to going through."

"There is a branch in the river. You have to go right. If you go left, there is an impossibly long underwater section. A kid once got in there. Luckily, it realized its mistake and waited in an air bubble. If his buddies hadn't fessed up to their parents at midnight after getting really worried, the kid could have died from hypothermia there. Though, middle in the night, rescue divers went in with an extra oxygen tank for him."

"The story did end badly though. The kid had gone crazy in the darkness. He claimed to have seen monsters, half human and half insect. The kid has watched too many horror movies. They had to transport him to a special clinic for PTSD that was run by the veteran's administration for extreme war trauma."

"Why did you two move to West Liberty?" asked Atticus.

"Our parents died in a car accident. We wanted to have a fresh start in a new place. We both spend almost a year locked in at home until the savings started running out. We took the last money and moved here. We loved our family home, yet after spending a year sleeping there in denial, the walls grew in. The cost of living is high. We thought showing up in a new place would move us out of our old habits. We wanted a walking city to avoid driving. Randalf still feels bad because he had tried to get dad to fix the brake pads, which dad had refused," narrated Sandra.

"On 8th street and Broadway, dad made a left turn. A Japanese tourist ran into the street. Dad attempted an emergency stop, while mom must have been screaming. The hard braking overpowered the brakes, and they failed completely. Dad swerved out of the way to avoid the tourist and drove into the CVS at the corner. The airbag deployed. Yet, the intense deceleration of a solid building caused their internal organs to rupture. They bled out internally. Randalf still blames himself," continued Sandra.

"Parents can be really rough. On my 21st birthday, my dad walked up to me with a shotgun. He loaded two birdshot shells and snapped the shotgun into function. Then, he told me that I was a fully grown man and to get the fuck of his property. I was confused with a cake on a paper plate in one hand, a birthday cone hat, and red lipstick kiss mark on the cheek. 'It's midnight. Birthday is over,' my dad repeated and pumped a shell into the shotgun," told Atticus.

"The first shell went into the air and send me running. The second shell went into the back of my thigh, a mad sting of a dozen #9 projectiles, 0.08" in diameter. They partially penetrated into muscle. With the adrenaline I kept running. At the property line, I stopped and turned around, 'Dad take me in!' He yelled at me to stay off his property, 'You with your tattoos, Nirvana, and drugs are not my son! I did what the government wanted of me and raised you well for 21 years. Now, we are done.'"

Atticus paused the tattooing. "You are cool, aren't you," he interjected. Then, he dropped his pants to his knees to show his right hamstring. The skin looked like dough that was rolled out by a dozen fingertip presses. All the pellets had created welts on the skin. There was a whole in his body hair. Sandra carefully touched the tough scar skin.

"I walked through the night by myself, not knowing what to do. I meandered through the fields. Around sunrise, I came across a barn and was dead tired. I went inside. It was an old barn, no longer used, mushrooms growing on the wood and no lock to speak off. I lay down on the ground and fell asleep."

"It must have been around noon, someone kicked hard against the wood near my head. I snapped away. Out of my mind from a lack of sleep and adrenaline. An old man with carefully groomed beard and hair stood over me. He had a hat that could have come from a Western, some cowboy figure that had come to goo money. It was a wide brimmed brown head. There was a leather string running around it with expensive looking silver jewelry at the front of the string. His fingers had silver rings with emerald stones. Wrapped around his hand, he had a leather that was meant for whipping, stingy whipping. His iris was yellow, perhaps something that old age did to eyes, a mystical look in his face, that narrow face with the deep, hard furrows of age."

"'What are you doing in my barn, son?' he had asked me. I told him my story and confusion. He took me in. He fed me food. He taught me to tattoo. He comes from an old lineage of tattoo artists that goes back to Native Americans. We had long arguments about abandoning sharp sticks for a modern tattoo gun. I got one. We experimented on pig skin. Slowly, it grew on him. He appreciated that I pushed him into modernity because he lived a bit of a hermit life out in the fields. He convinced a friend to set up this tattoo shop for me, so that I could make a living. Crazy story, huh?" finished Atticus.

Sandra winced, pulling up her cheeks to her eyes.

"Sorry, yeah, closer to the nipple, it's going to hurt more. And over the collarbone, it's going to hurt like hell. Better take a big swig," encouraged Atticus.

Sandra raised the vodka to her lips again, the fist around the neck of the bottle so close that she was almost drinking out of her fist. The water bubbles floated up in the bottle. When the bottom started lowering, Atticus held it up. Sandra bravely sucked vodka with a tear running out of the corner from her eye to fight the burn in her throat. With a deep sigh, she let herself fall back completely into the seat like a ragdoll, gently breathing out of the mouth to cool the burn with fresh air.

"The tingling was almost comforting in the beginning. Now, the area feels so irritated," complained Sandra.

"Yeah, you have at least two more hours to go. I've barely traced the outlines. The filling in is going to be the roughest," warned Atticus with a worried look.

"Randalf, if I pass, just carry me home. You are my brother." With that, Sandra took another long drink out of the bottle. The last drink hat already taken effect. Her face was sweaty. The makeup had melted to lose its definition. The based was lifted up by the liquid. Her eye liner had gotten blotchy.

They continued tattooing in silence. Randalf started playing the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and sang along, "...with the lights out, it's less dangerous... a mosquito, my libido..." Sandra sung along drunk. Atticus got lost in the focus on the line work. The time seemed to stand still in the room while it ran on outside. The small band grew closer together in silent company - the ease of being accepted in someone's presence.

An hour later, Sandra started muttering, "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She was clenching the hand grip on the armrest hard. Then, she pounded her right hand hard on the armrest, "God dammit motherfucker!" Her whole body shook. Atticus quickly pulled back from her collarbone, the needle angrily hissing into the air like a wasp.

"Whoa!" Atticus called out. "You can't do that! You don't want any mess up in your tattoo. Hold onto whatever you need to hold onto. Hold onto the chair. Hold onto your thigh. Hold your brother's hand. Scream however loud you need to. But you absolutely, positively cannot move, especially no sudden jerks like that."

"Okay," said Sandra taking another swig from the vodka.

"Are we good?" asked Atticus on the fence.

"We are good. I got an iron determination!" said Sandra looking steely ahead and tensing up her whole body.

The needle went back down. Sandra's face popped with pain, yet the muscles beneath her neck didn't move, except for her right hand. That right hand gripped the armrest hard, thought the better, and let go. The hand searched her own thigh. The fingers tried to pinch it, yet couldn't get a strong hold. The fingers rolled up the hem of her skirt to squeeze that. Her skirt got pulled around. She let go. Somehow, her hand ended up flat on the pubic bone. The needle went down for another long line near the collar bone. Her hand clamped down hard on its own. A little sultry moan escaped her lips. Her neck muscles relaxed from the pressure on her mound.

"Do whatever you have to. We are in the back of a tattoo studio," encouraged Atticus happy that he could move on with the lines. "This is the hardest part. You can't leave with a half-finished tattoo. Yet, it seems impossible to go on. We've got to make it through the impossible somehow. Let yourself be creative on what you do. I've seen all kinds of things. It's better to be a bit embarrassed now than to walk around the rest of your life with an embarrassing, unfinished tattoo. Recite Welsh poems, yell racist slurs, or threaten to beat the crap out of me. Just hold on, every line gets you closer to the goal."

Her fingers started pressing harder on her mound. She put more pressure on her fingers tips who were over her introitus. The fingers at first only felt the fabric of her skirt and panties. The pressure increased until she felt her warm flesh and a little arousal. "I can't do this. I can do this," she whimpered, the needle almost on her collarbone, tears streaming down the side of her face, that pale bloodless face suffering tormenting pain.

Her fingers slipped under the skirt. Her fingers slipped sideways into the panties. The wetness coated her finger. She wasn't particularly wet, only the normal moist. Yet, it was enough to walk round, press on her clitoris, rub the area beneath the clitoris, and to search for more fluid inside of her entrance. The start of her cave was often dry, yet deeper was almost always some wetness that she could spread out. Her vaginal aroma spread through the room. She got lost searching and touching her vagina. She scooped the wetness from deep inside of her out to spread it in between the labia and up to her clitoris.

"This is working. You have much less body tremors. Your lines will be super straight!" encouraged Atticus.

"Really?" said Sandra with the glimmer of a rainbow in her eyes.

With the last restraint removed, Sandra let two fingers slip inside while circling her thumb on her clit. A soft smacking sound added to the whir of the tattoo gun. Carefully to avoid moving her upper body, she pushed her panties down to have a freer hand motion. Another ten minutes and her skirt was folded up. Her hips were completely naked. She finger blasted herself lost in pleasure and the cheeks flush red from the building orgasms. She popped off one orgasm about every five minutes. The pain had become secondary. With the distortion of erotic arousal, the pain had even become a nice play toy of varied sensation. Her juice ran down her ass and pooled on the seat of the leather chair.

Three hours after the tattoo start, Atticus lifted the needle up and clicked the release to let the disposable needle fall out. Sandra was so slush drunk and erotically worn that she may not even remember the end. Randalf signed for Sandra's credit card: $425. Atticus reminded them to come back the next day for aftercare. He put her arm over his shoulder and walked her home.

The next morning, Randalf woke up to howl from the kitchen. He pushed the comforter away, walked out of his room in his boxer shorts and socks, and took a look at the scene. Sandra was in her underwear, stretchy snug microfiber. One arm was high in the air, so that the other could rub a lemon to her armpit. The cold citrus juice was running down the sides of her body. Her body was glistening from moisture. In front of her was wooden cutting board, chef's knife, and a whole bag of lemons cut into wedges. The lemon wedges were in various states of fray from being squeezed. The whole kitchen had an uplifting sour scent.

"What are you doing, Sandra?"

"There is a Puerto Rican hangover cure that says rubbing a lemon in the armpit of your drinking hand will prevent a hangover by hydrating it," said Sandra.

Randalf shook his head and walked to the bathroom. He turned on the shower and let the freshness wash over his face with the water running down the back of his head. Once his hair flattened by the water, he had a charm to him like a Greek statue. Once the second rate clothes were peeled off, he had a trim body from rowing on a team before their parent's accident. The gluts were standing out proud and round. His back muscles were well contoured. His skin had a milky appearance. His face had the look of innocence, which didn't help him trying to get respect, yet made him even more adorable naked in the shower. He wrapped a white, soft towel around his hips and walked out into the kitchen.

"Sorry about your hangover. But, it was way worth it. Your tattoo rocks. What am I just going to do about Jenna? It's embarrassing. She had to carry home a stranger," asked Randalf.

"Don't worry about it. She seemed quite cool. Get her some flowers on the way and say thank you. Don't make a big deal out of it. You'll only make a mess. Give her a hug and move on. Say she should come with you when you are getting your tattoo!" said Sandra not finding complexity in the issue at all.

"I made a huge mess out of myself. I mean I fell into fountain. I can't handle a drop of dab. She's never going to like me!" complained Randalf.

"Oh, you like her! That's why you are so crazy about what to do! You are adorable! Big women totally deserve love as well. Compliment her personality! Like tell her how smart she is! Tell her that you like her quick wit! Everyone loves to hear that!" suggested Sandra getting excited.

"Well, the only problem is that we talked for about half a minute and I passed out. That's not much of a genuine time period to appraise her intelligence," whined Randalf.

"You guys always get way too logical. That's why you are still a virgin!" Sandra chased the argument.

"I'm not a virgin anymore!" insisted Randalf.

"Tell me whom!" Sandra called the bluff.

"A cute girl had sex with me. You don't remember," Randalf blurted out.

"Ah, ah, what's her name? I bet you don't know because she doesn't exist," Sandra was having fun with this.

"I don't remember. It was very spontaneous," said Randalf.

"Oh my god, why do you have the need to lie to me? I always tell you what's going on, including how the last guy barked like a dog when we fucked?" yelled Sandra. "Oh, that makes my head hurt!"

"Maybe, your stories are always awesome. And mine aren't," replied Randalf subdued and filled his bowl with Lucky Charm.

"You know that I love you, Randalf. I just can't filter my thoughts with this headache!" consoled Sandra.

"Yeah, I'll get some flowers on the way to college," acquiesced Randalf quietly.

An hour later, Randalf walked into the classroom on the second floor with a bouquet of spring color flowers: reds, white, yellow, blue, and all glowing brightly and perky. He snuck a look to the back of the room. Seeing that Jenna wasn't there, he sat down and put the flowers low next to his feed to draw the least attention. The flowers magically floated up into the air. A sense of dizziness overcame him from the unexpected and unwanted dissolution of the law of gravity. His stomach felt like it was coming up as if he were floating in the weightlessness of outer space. Then, he realized Tricia's brown, slender arm attached to the bouquet.

"Oh, you are so sweet to appreciate me as your desk mate. You didn't have to do that," exclaimed Tricia. Without pausing a beat, she turned to her two cheerleader friends to show her the bouquet. "Look at what a gentleman this Northerner is. He gave me this lovely bouquet because he knows what a prize I am to be sitting next to. Isn't he adorable!"

"Oh goash, those are amazing," said her two friends, sticking their noses into the flowers and starting to lick them. "This one tastes like raspberry!"

"Um," interrupted Randalf, "can I have my flowers back? They are not for you!"

"What do you mean? You just brought me flowers. Why else would you bring flowers to school?" stumbled Tricia confused.

That moment, Jenna walked in the door with her posse. Randalf snatched the flowers out of Tricia's hand and thrust them at Jenna with an outstretched arm. "Jenna, these are for you. Thank you so much for getting me home the other day!"

Jenna raised her eyebrow and slowly formed words: "You are welcome. But, you didn't have to pass around flowers to have half the class licking them."

"I'm sorry about that. I didn't know they would do that!" said Randalf flustered.

Jenna took the flowers. Tricia's friends were spitting with their lips together to get any taste of the flowers out of their mouth. "They tasted disgusting. Brrr!" Randalf looked around confused. The teacher looked sternly at Randalf until Randalf sunk lower in his chair and focused on the teacher. The teacher turned the lights off and went through a deck of photos. Randalf was glad for the semi-darkness.