You don't know how long it has been there, but a friend points it out. In the small of your back, on your left side, near your kidneys. A tattoo of a jewelled spider. It is quite exquisite, quite unusual, oddly evil - and a complete mystery. How on earth did it get there?
The design is surprisingly lifelike - except that you are certain that no spider ever looked quite so malevolent. Tattooists who see it are impressed - the design has a richness of texture and colour that they have never been able to achieve.
Yet the question remains. You have never had a tattoo in your life. So where in hell did this come from?
Possibilities
1 Three weeks later and there's a second tattoo, on the sole of your foot. This time it is a reddish ball, which appears to glow eerily.
Then you begin to feel increasingly tired. You have difficulty waking in the morning, and begin to look drawn and haggard. As the weeks pass you become weaker, and fall prey to the weakest of germs. Coughs and cold cripple you; you are quite sick.
All this time, the spider tattoo never moves, never changes. The same cannot be said for the ball. It swells and grows to the size of a large coin. It becomes oddly translucent, and smaller spidery shapes can be seen inside. It is an egg sac.
Then you wake one morning feeling fresher and brighter than in ages. The sac tattoo has gone, but in its place are dozen of tiny spider tattoos, covering your skin. And three days later they are also gone - as has the larger spider, their mother. They are never seen again.
2 Over a period of time, the tattoo seems to get smaller. In fact, if you measure it, you learn that it is getting smaller. Then one night, it has gone.
Two days later, it reappears - but on a different part of your body. It is bigger, bloated. And again, over a period of several weeks it shrinks, growing smaller until once more it vanishes. Only to reappear.
This cycle is repeated over and over. Each time the tattoo returns, bloated, corpulent and somehow sated. As if it has fed from something. Or someone . . .
3 The tattoo is the mark of the spider-god. Spiders from all around come to be near their god. Your house slowly becomes infested with spiders. They are everywhere, as are their cobwebs. (There is not an insect to be seen, naturally.)
Wherever you goes, spiders are drawn to you. They climb through your clothes, hide in your hair, scamper across your skin.
They simply like being with you, near you.
© Steve Hatherley
The design is surprisingly lifelike - except that you are certain that no spider ever looked quite so malevolent. Tattooists who see it are impressed - the design has a richness of texture and colour that they have never been able to achieve.
Yet the question remains. You have never had a tattoo in your life. So where in hell did this come from?
Possibilities
1 Three weeks later and there's a second tattoo, on the sole of your foot. This time it is a reddish ball, which appears to glow eerily.
Then you begin to feel increasingly tired. You have difficulty waking in the morning, and begin to look drawn and haggard. As the weeks pass you become weaker, and fall prey to the weakest of germs. Coughs and cold cripple you; you are quite sick.
All this time, the spider tattoo never moves, never changes. The same cannot be said for the ball. It swells and grows to the size of a large coin. It becomes oddly translucent, and smaller spidery shapes can be seen inside. It is an egg sac.
Then you wake one morning feeling fresher and brighter than in ages. The sac tattoo has gone, but in its place are dozen of tiny spider tattoos, covering your skin. And three days later they are also gone - as has the larger spider, their mother. They are never seen again.
2 Over a period of time, the tattoo seems to get smaller. In fact, if you measure it, you learn that it is getting smaller. Then one night, it has gone.
Two days later, it reappears - but on a different part of your body. It is bigger, bloated. And again, over a period of several weeks it shrinks, growing smaller until once more it vanishes. Only to reappear.
This cycle is repeated over and over. Each time the tattoo returns, bloated, corpulent and somehow sated. As if it has fed from something. Or someone . . .
3 The tattoo is the mark of the spider-god. Spiders from all around come to be near their god. Your house slowly becomes infested with spiders. They are everywhere, as are their cobwebs. (There is not an insect to be seen, naturally.)
Wherever you goes, spiders are drawn to you. They climb through your clothes, hide in your hair, scamper across your skin.
They simply like being with you, near you.
© Steve Hatherley
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