Chapter Text
Why did I let her go?
Because letting go once does not mean the wanting ever died.
It only means the obsession learned how to breathe without making noise.
For years, I had mistaken silence for mercy. I had worn it like mourning cloth. I had folded it neatly across my tongue and kept it there, pressed between my teeth until it tasted of iron. I told myself restraint was dignity. I told myself love, when unreturned, was better buried than spoken. I told myself many things. Most lies become convincing when they are repeated in the dark.
The first day I met sunlight, I was not standing outside my family’s manor as a little girl, pale and unimpressed, enduring the obscene warmth of morning on my face.
No.
The first day I met sunlight, it had claws painted in rainbow polish, a smile bright enough to constitute a public disturbance, and the audacity to say, “Howdy, roomie,” as if I had not just been sentenced to share oxygen with a human confetti cannon.
Enid Sinclair.
Bubbly. Loud. Allergic to despair. A werewolf with too many colors in her wardrobe and too much hope in her chest. She looked at me as if I was not something strange dragged out of a mausoleum, but someone who had merely arrived late to a party she had been saving a seat for.
“You look a little pale,” she had said.
“I am not a hugger,” I replied.
It should have ended there.
It did not.
She became a bruise along my ribs that never faded. Not the ugly kind. The kind one presses when alone, just to prove the pain still answers. She became a memory that lived in the back of my skull with pin needles for teeth, scraping, scraping, scraping whenever I dared to pretend I had moved on.
There were years after that. Adventures, if one wants to be crude. Investigations. Arguments. Near deaths. Shared rooms. Shared secrets. The kind of closeness neither of us named because naming a thing gives it shape, and shape makes it easier to lose.
Then graduation came.
Life, that vulgar little thief, put its hands on us.
Slowly, we drifted. Not all at once. That would have been kinder. Instead, distance arrived politely. A delayed letter. A missed call. A visit postponed. A silence explained away by work, by family, by timing, by all the cowardly little reasons people use when they do not want to admit they are watching something precious starve.
And the last time I saw her, she was wearing white.
White. Of all colors.
A wedding dress clinging to her like moonlight had learned devotion. Her hair was pinned back, her smile trembling at the edges, her hands clasped around a bouquet she would later throw to a crowd of laughing women who had never once considered using it as kindling.
Ajax stood beside her.
Her husband.
The word still moved through me like a hooked blade.
Later that night, after vows had become law and applause had become memory, I saw them dancing at the back of the venue. The reception had spilled outside beneath a bruised sky, silvered by the moon. Enid laughed against his shoulder. Ajax held her carefully, like a decent man would. That was the worst part. He was not cruel. He was not monstrous. He did not steal her with fangs or lies or bloodied hands.
He simply loved her aloud before I ever found the courage to open my mouth.
I watched them from the edge of the garden, hands folded, spine straight, face empty.
Inside, something in me came apart so quietly even I almost missed the sound.
That was the last time.
Years.
Years, and still she remained.
In my cold, dead heart.
Why?
The answer began to unravel beneath the steady, insectile buzz of a machine.
The sound ate through the memory first. It swallowed the moonlight, the wedding music, the phantom rustle of Enid’s dress. It chewed Wednesday’s voice into static until the world rebuilt itself out of brick, shadow, antiseptic, old ink, and the copper thread of blood.
The tattoo gun pulsed in her gloved hand with a rhythm almost intimate in its violence.
The shop was called 'Black Mass Ink', though the sign outside flickered badly enough that most nights it read 'Lack Ass Ink', a defect Wednesday considered the city’s only successful joke. It sat between a shuttered pawn shop and a twenty four hour laundromat where the dryers screamed like condemned souls. Inside, the tattoo studio looked like a chapel for bad decisions. Exposed red brick climbed the walls, darkened by age and old cigarette smoke no amount of bleach could exorcise. Black steel beams crossed the ceiling. A rectangular light hung above the main station, cold and surgical, pouring down on the red leather tattoo chair like judgment.
The walls were crowded with flash sheets, framed art, blackwork designs, skulls, saints, devils, roses, hands with too many fingers, angels with their faces scratched out. A large red painting of a demonic skull watched over the room from the back wall, grinning with the patience of something that knew everyone eventually became meat. Shelves held ink caps, bottles of wash, ointments, disinfectant, wrapped grips, sterile needles, paper towels folded with obsessive precision. The air smelled of green soap, latex, alcohol, metal, and skin under stress.
Wednesday belonged there.
Not merely worked there. Belonged.
The woman on the table lay on her stomach with her headphones clamped over her ears, her upper body professionally draped, her lower back and the curve beneath it exposed for the piece. Modesty had been arranged with tape, coverings, and the kind of sterile indifference that turned nakedness into anatomy. Her fingers gripped the edge of the table whenever the needle crossed a tender patch. She was trying very hard not to wince. Her brows betrayed her. So did the occasional tightening of her jaw, the cheek caught between her teeth.
Wednesday noticed every twitch.
She did not coddle. She did not coo. She only adjusted.
“Breathe through it,” she said, not looking up from the skin. “Holding your breath makes the nerves dramatic which causes you to act like a baby.”
The woman gave a strained little laugh that broke halfway through.
The tattoo was nearly finished. A blackwork and cybersigilism cross stretched from the lower spine and swept outward, ornamental and cruel, with batlike wings folded around the structure of it. Fine lines spilled from the central design like cracks in old glass. Gothic filigree curled along the edges, delicate enough to look grown rather than drawn. It was sharp, symmetrical, and almost devotional, if one worshipped in abandoned cathedrals and considered pain a valid form of prayer.
The difficult part was the curve of her butt.
Skin changed there. It stretched differently. It shifted with every breath, muscle, and the involuntary flinch of the body trying to survive decoration. Wednesday braced the side of her gloved hand lightly, stretched the skin with two fingers, and worked the last line with controlled precision. Not too deep. Not too shallow. Enough for the ink to hold cleanly once the skin healed and settled. She dipped, wiped, checked, dipped again. The machine hummed against her palm. The needle flickered in and out too quickly for softness, opening the skin in clean black whispers.
A bead of blood surfaced.
Wednesday wiped it away with green soap and a folded towel.
“Almost done,” she said.
The woman exhaled shakily. “That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.”
“I lied for morale. Boost up your confidence.”
“Is that legal? Maybe i should sue for the falsehood.”
“In this room, I am the law. So Goodluck with that.”
The woman laughed again, this time more real, though it turned into a hiss when Wednesday returned to the linework.
Wednesday’s mouth barely shifted. It might have been amusement. It might have been a muscle spasm from prolonged exposure to humanity.
She finished the final taper with a feather-light pull, lifted the machine, and let the silence settle as the buzz died. For a moment, only the low music from the shop speakers remained, some gloomy bass-heavy track one of the junior artists had left playing before abandoning her to close alone. Outside the front windows, night pressed itself against the glass. The street beyond was wet from earlier rain, reflecting neon and passing headlights like wounds refusing to clot.
Wednesday leaned back on her stool and rolled her shoulders. Her neck cracked once. She had been hunched over for hours, and her spine was beginning to express opinions.
She set the machine carefully onto the tray, away from the sterile field, then inspected the tattoo from three angles. Left side. Right side. Directly behind. She checked the negative space, the balance of the wings, the central line of the cross against the spine. She looked for blowouts, weak saturation, places where the skin had begun to swell enough to distort the design. The curve had taken the ink better than expected.
A beautiful wound.
She wiped the area gently, clearing the last veil of ink and plasma.
“There,” she said.
The woman lifted her head, pulling one side of the headphones off. “Done?”
“Unless you intend to grow a tail in the next five minutes, yes.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“I doubt 'He' was involved.”
The woman pushed herself up too quickly and immediately made a sound between a laugh and a groan.
“Slowly,” Wednesday said, already standing. “Your body believes it has survived an animal attack. Do not prove it wrong by fainting on my floor.”
“I’m good. I’m good.”
“You are pale and sweating.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
Wednesday looked at her.
The woman blinked. “Sorry.”
“Accepted. I can take a good jab here or there.”
Wednesday offered a hand, firm and impersonal, helping her sit up without tugging at the fresh tattoo. The woman adjusted the front covering and pasties with a complete lack of shame, then shuffled toward the standing mirror near the wall, trying to twist enough to see the piece. She could catch fragments. A wing. A line. The black spine of the cross vanishing along the curve.
“Oh my God, I can’t see it. I hate that I chose a place I can’t see.”
“It is a recurring flaw in human decision-making.”
Wednesday took her phone from the rolling tray after peeling off one glove and sanitizing her hand. She crouched, framed the tattoo in the camera, and took several photos under the best light. One straight on. Two angled. One close enough to show the fine linework and the clean tapering. She checked them for glare, blur, redness, and shadow. Professional documentation mattered. A tattoo was not finished when the needle stopped. It was finished when it could be proven.
She turned the phone toward the woman.
The woman went silent.
Her mouth parted softly. Her eyes widened. The pain, the hours, the nerves, the embarrassment of lying half naked beneath cold lights, all of it slipped away for a second.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Wednesday’s dark eyes moved from the screen to the woman’s face.
“It suits you.”
“That’s insane. That’s actually insane. You made it look better than the sketch.”
“The sketch was a mere promise. Skin is the real canvas, it holds up well.”
The woman laughed, emotional now. “I love it.”
“As you should. I poured so much into it.”
Wednesday took a few more professional shots with permission, adjusting the client’s posture so the lines were not warped by twisting. She gave short instructions.
“Shoulders relaxed. Do not arch. Turn your chin left. Stop trying to look at it. You are distorting the lower line.”
“Bossy.”
“Merely being accurate.”
Once she had the photos, Wednesday guided her back to the table.
“Down again,” she said. “We clean and wrap it now.”
The woman sighed. “I have to lie back down?”
“Unless you want your fresh tattoo exposed to denim, sweat, bacteria, and whatever emotional residue lives in your coat.”
“Point taken.”
She settled carefully onto her stomach again, and Wednesday returned to work with the same ritual severity she gave everything. She washed her hands, put on fresh gloves, and began gently cleaning the tattoo with diluted green soap and sterile water. The skin was angry now, raised in places, shining with fluid. Redness bloomed around the black lines. The cross looked less like ink and more like something summoned beneath the surface, trying to root itself into her nervous system.
Wednesday wiped away excess ink, blood, and plasma in slow, controlled passes.
“This is an open wound,” she said. “A decorative one, but still a wound. Tonight it will weep. That is normal. If it smells foul, burns excessively, grows hot around the edges, or begins oozing anything that looks like it belongs in a cursed swamp, contact a doctor, not TikTok.”
The woman snorted into the table padding.
Wednesday applied a thin layer of ointment where needed, then reached for the protective film. She measured it, cut it cleanly, and smoothed it over the tattoo with careful pressure, sealing the edges without trapping air pockets.
“Leave this on for three to five days,” she continued. “Do not pick at it. Do not scratch it. Do not soak it. No baths, pools, hot tubs, lakes, decorative bogs, or romantic walks in contaminated rainwater. Showering is acceptable. Let water run over it. Do not scrub. When the film comes off, wash gently with unscented soap, pat dry with a clean towel, moisturize lightly. No fragrance. No heavy lotion. No sun. No tight clothing rubbing against it.”
The woman nodded.
“I mean it,” Wednesday said, pressing the last edge flat. “If you scratch it, I will know.”
“How would you know?”
Wednesday’s eyes lifted.
“I always know, trust me. I have my ways.”
The woman believed her immediately.
Wednesday helped her sit up again, then turned away without interest while the woman wrestled her clothes back on. The client struggled with the angle, careful not to drag fabric across the fresh wrap. Wednesday assisted only when the fumbling became inefficient. She held the shirt open, guided without touching more than necessary, and passed her the aftercare kit from the drawer. Inside were written instructions, packets of unscented soap, a small approved lotion sample, and a card with the shop number.
“Follow the paper when you forget everything I said.”
“I won’t forget.”
“You will. Pain makes people sentimental, not attentive.”
At the front counter, the woman paid, still grinning like she had just survived a rite of passage. Wednesday rang her out beneath the dull glow of the register. The clock behind the desk read 10:57 p.m. The other artists were long gone, their stations dark and wrapped, their laughter erased from the building. Only Wednesday remained, black-clad and severe, her hair a dark, messy nest pinned up with loose strands falling around her face.
She was twenty five now, though age had not softened her. It had only edited her into a fine woman.
The old braids were gone most days, replaced by black hair cut in ragged layers, often twisted up to keep it out of ink and blood. A small hoop pierced her nose. Silver glinted at her lip when the light caught just right. Her ears held dark metal. Around her throat, partly hidden by the collar of her fitted black top, a cybersigilism tattoo climbed from beneath the fabric like thorned circuitry, sharp black lines branching at the side of her neck, disappearing under her jaw and down toward her collarbone.
Her hands were tattooed too. Thin black sigils ran over her fingers like elegant fractures. A realistic raven skull rested across one forearm, shaded in black and gray, its beak pointed toward her wrist. Her other arm carried a blackwork blade wrapped in thorned vines, the hilt vanishing beneath her sleeve. On the side of her throat, the visible sigil formed the suggestion of a broken halo, jagged and severe.
There were more hidden beneath her clothes.
Five pieces she had chosen not for beauty, but for evidence.
The broken halo at her neck.
The raven skull on her left forearm.
The thorn-wrapped blade down her right arm.
A black cybersigilism design beneath her breasts, shaped like a cathedral window collapsing inward.
A sprawling sigil along her upper thigh and hip, all thin spikes and branching lines, as if lightning had learned calligraphy.
The woman signed the receipt, then paused.
“Seriously. Thank you so much.”
Wednesday slid the aftercare kit closer. “Do not thank me. Heal correctly. That will be gratitude enough along with a positive review on our website.”
The woman smiled and, before Wednesday could calculate the danger, hugged her.
Wednesday went rigid.
Every muscle in her body locked as if affection were a bear trap. Her arms remained at her sides. Her face did not change. The hug lasted no more than two seconds, but Wednesday endured it with the expression of someone watching a slow-moving medical procedure performed without consent.
The woman pulled back quickly. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m a hugger.”
“My condolences for those bad habits.”
She laughed, grabbed her bag, and left a folded stack of bills in the tip jar that was far too generous. The bell above the door rang as she stepped into the night, still moving carefully, still smiling over her shoulder.
“Goodnight, Wednesday. Thank you again!”
“Survive the healing process.”
The door closed.
The shop fell quiet.
Wednesday stood behind the counter for a moment, listening to the hum of the lights, the faraway hiss of tires on wet pavement, the building settling into itself. Her reflection hovered in the dark window. Black hair. Pale face. Red mouth. Eyes that had learned too young how to look empty.
Behind that reflection, for one treacherous second, she saw white.
A wedding dress.
She blinked.
Only the street remained.
Wednesday exhaled through her nose and turned away.
There was still work to do.
Closing the shop was a ritual, and Wednesday respected rituals, particularly those involving disinfectant. She returned to the station and broke it down with practiced precision. Used barriers came off and went into the proper bin. Needles into sharps. Disposable ink caps were tossed. Surfaces were sprayed, left wet for the required contact time, then wiped clean. She scrubbed the chair where exposed skin had rested, cleaned the armrests, the tray, the light handles, the cords, the rolling stool. She replaced what needed replacing. Wrapped what needed wrapping. Checked inventory with an eye sharpened by suspicion.
The mop bucket waited in the back like a small, wheeled corpse.
She swept first, gathering lint, paper scraps, dried stencil fragments, and the ordinary dust of human traffic into a pile. Then she mopped the floor with hot water and disinfectant until the scent rose sharp enough to sting. The red chair gleamed under the overhead light. The brick walls watched. The demon skull smiled.
At the counter, she unlocked her phone and looked through the photos from the session. The tattoo looked excellent. Clean. Balanced. Vicious in the right places. She selected four images, adjusted the crop, kept the lighting honest. She did not overedit. Overedited tattoo photos were for cowards, frauds, and men who called themselves visionaries because they owned ring lights.
She opened Instagram and uploaded the set to her professional page.
The caption took her less than thirty seconds.
Fresh blackwork cross with cybersigilism elements. Lower back and hip placement. Approximately six hours. Client sat well and only threatened to haunt me twice. Books open next month. No coverups of exes’ names unless the story amuses me.
She posted it, locked the phone, and began shutting off lights.
One by one, the shop receded into darkness.
At the door, she set the alarm, stepped outside, and locked up. The night air was cold enough to please her. Rainwater glittered in cracks along the sidewalk. Somewhere nearby, a man shouted at no one. Somewhere else, a bottle broke. The city had a heartbeat, diseased and stubborn.
Wednesday crossed to her car.
The 1967 Chevrolet Impala waited at the curb, black and long and beautiful in the way hearses were beautiful. Her father had given it to her years ago with tears in his eyes and murder in his nostalgia, calling it a family-worthy machine. She had accepted it with more feeling than she showed him. It was hers now. Properly maintained. Immaculate. Old enough to have ghosts in the upholstery.
She slid behind the wheel and shut the door. The world muffled at once.
The engine turned over with a low, throaty growl that rolled through the frame and up her spine. Wednesday sat for a moment without driving. She reached into the inner pocket of her coat and removed a cigarette from a battered silver case. She placed it between her lips, flicked open her lighter, and let the flame bloom blue-gold in the dark.
For a second, fire warmed the underside of her face.
She inhaled.
The tip burned red. Smoke filled her mouth, then her lungs, bitter and familiar. She held it there longer than most people would have found comfortable, then exhaled slowly through parted lips. The smoke curled past the windshield like a spirit deciding whether to stay.
A filthy habit, she knew.
So were grief and memory.
She drove home through streets slick with rain, one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the open window as ash trembled at the cigarette’s end. The city moved around her in blurred signs, puddled neon, shuttered storefronts, late buses carrying exhausted strangers beneath fluorescent misery. Twenty minutes passed without music. Wednesday preferred the engine. It asked nothing from her.
Home was an old industrial building converted into studio apartments with exposed pipes, uneven floors, and radiators that complained like dying men. It sat at the edge of a neighborhood trying and failing to become fashionable. Half the tenants were artists, night-shift workers, and people who looked like they knew how to dispose of evidence. Wednesday found it tolerable.
She parked behind the building, killed the engine, and sat until the cigarette burned near the filter. Then she crushed it into the ashtray, took her bag, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. The hallway smelled faintly of old wood, metal, incense, and someone’s burnt dinner.
Her key turned in the lock.
The apartment greeted her with darkness.
Wednesday stepped inside and threw her keys into a ceramic bowl shaped like a black apple. It had once been intended for fruit. She had never insulted it that way.
The studio was small but exact. A bed with black sheets. A desk crowded with sketchbooks, anatomy references, occult texts, and a laptop. A wall of pinned drawings. A narrow kitchen. Tall windows looking out over the city. A few plants, all poisonous. A bookshelf containing medical texts, poetry, murder trials, and one pastel friendship scrapbook Enid had made her at Nevermore, hidden behind a row of embalming manuals like contraband.
Wednesday did not look toward it.
She dropped her bag onto a chair and began undressing as she crossed the room. Coat first. Boots kicked aside. Black shirt pulled over her head and tossed toward the laundry basket, where it landed half in, half out. Pants unbuttoned and peeled away. Socks dragged off with the irritated impatience of someone removing the day’s final stupidity.
By the time she reached the bathroom, she was bare.
Not vulnerable.
Bare. Naked, undressed-
There was a difference.
The mirror above the sink caught her in pieces as she passed. Pale skin marked by ink, metal, and old scars. A body shaped not by softness alone but by endurance. Strong thighs. Rounded hips. A stomach that rose and fell with steady breath. Small breasts pierced with silver through brown nipples. A navel ring dark against the white plane of her abdomen. The black cathedral-window tattoo beneath her breasts curved with her ribs, its sharp symmetrical lines making her torso look like ruined stained glass. Along one hip and upper thigh, the branching sigil spread in thin aggressive strokes, crawling toward the curve of her body like thorned lightning.
Her scars were quieter than the tattoos.
Some from childhood. Some from Nevermore. Some from creatures with claws. Some from her own refusal to step backward when stepping backward would have been wise. They crossed her skin in pale slivers and faint ridges, little signatures left by survival. Dark hair shadowed the lowest part of her pelvis, unaltered and unapologetic as she didn't really shave much. There was nothing ornamental about her nakedness. It was simply the truth of her body after years of choosing pain, art, and control over comfort.
She turned on the shower.
Cold.
Always cold.
The pipes protested before the water came hard and silver from the showerhead. Wednesday stepped beneath it without flinching. The shock struck her skin like a thousand needles. Her breath caught once, not from weakness, but because the body was an animal and animals always objected to being punished.
She let the cold consume her.
Water flattened her hair against her neck. It ran over the tattoo at her throat, down the raven skull on her arm, along the broken shadows beneath her breasts, over the old scars and newer ink. Gooseflesh rose across her skin. The day’s residue slid away. Green soap. Ink. Plasma. Smoke. Rain. The phantom warmth of a stranger’s unwanted hug.
Still, beneath all of that, Enid remained.
Enid in a white dress.
Enid laughing beneath moonlight.
Enid saying “Howdy, roomie” as if Wednesday had not been doomed from the first syllable.
Wednesday pressed both hands against the tile and lowered her head.
The water beat against the back of her neck until the skin went numb.
Her apartment was silent except for the shower and the distant groan of the building around her. Twenty five years old. Skilled. Employed. Alone. Marked in every way a person could be marked and still live.
She closed her eyes.
Will this be the rest of my life?