All right, where to begin…
This is weird but I had a friend in college named Russell. This guy thought that he was God’s gift to women. He was always striving to be the center of attention. He loved the spotlight more than anything. Until one spring afternoon, a quiet professor named Dr. Wang brought his world crashing down. Dr. Wang pointed out, in front of the entire lecture hall, that the Japanese tattoo that he thought was cool, was actually Chinese and was utterly ridiculous.
“No, it means Freedom!”, he laughed nervously as everybody stared right at him.
“I assure you, that tattoo is in Hanzi and it says Mianfei. Free of charge…”
I remembered the whole room erupted in laughter at my cocky friend, while he stood there speechless. You know though what the absolute worst part of everything was? Russell acted like he didn’t even give a shit. He kept the mistranslated tattoo and never once acted ashamed of it. He owned that monstrosity.
I thought about this college story that morning as I pulled away the white bandage from my sore upper cheek. Underneath some saran wrapped goop, I found myself staring at a tiny tattoo.
A permanent tattoo right on my fucking face!!!
This was two weeks ago when this whole insane ordeal started. The night before I got uncharacteristically drunk with an ex-girlfriend and woke up alone at my place with this thing on my face. It took a good half hour before I could stop hyperventilating and calm down to take a realistic assessment of the damage.
In all honesty, the tattoo was quite small. A small tat in black ink in the shape of a small eye. I honestly had no clue how I got the idea to get that stamped on my face. The simple eye was about the size of a tear and about half an inch below my actual lower right eye. Below that was some kind of Lego shape and then to the right of that Lego shape was a similar but more detailed shape that looked like a small person kneeling. Altogether, the thing is maybe three quarters of an inch in diameter.
I called my ex, who was anything but a morning person. She swore up and down that it was all my idea. I was drunk and was searching on my phone for the perfect tat. Apparently, that is the masochistic thing that I settled on.
“It’ll be fine. This is 2023, my manager at my work has arm sleeve tattoos and it has done nothing to hurt his career. This isn’t the 1900s, dude”, she told me.
I ended up calling in sick to work that day. I just couldn’t stomach the thought of everyone at the company staring at the new guy with this awful tattoo. I wondered whether they would think I was in some kind of strange gang. I just didn’t think I could face anyone.
The following morning though I got up, got dressed and headed off to work to face the music. I ventured into my boss’ office to break the news and braced for the inevitable backlash.
“Nice. I don’t think I’ve seen anything like that. Oh, before I forget, do you want to sign this birthday card for Vanessa?”, he said somewhat distractedly.
Maybe it wouldn’t be bad, I thought after that. My boss, the only one whose opinion really mattered, didn’t seem to care. Nobody else really looked as I walked to my desk. Admittedly though, I spent most of the time strategically covering it with my hand. Once I sat down, I relaxed a bit more and started my work.
It was mid-morning and still an hour or so until lunch when I noticed Lindsey staring. She swiveled around in her chair so that she was facing directly into my cubicle. Her mouth was slightly open, and her face was frozen expressionless. Her eyes though burned daggers right into mine.
I smiled awkwardly and my adrenaline jumped. I said “Hey, what’s up?” to her and waited for her to ask about my tattoo.
She didn’t move.
In fact, she didn’t move for the next five freaking minutes as I waited for her to speak. In fact, I waited for her to do anything really. But no, she just continued to stare motionlessly at my face like she was trying to win some unagreed-upon staring contest.
So, I did what any rational mature adult does in a weird situation. I awkwardly shifted back to my computer and pretended to work, ignoring my rude cubicle neighbor.
Without even looking, I could feel her gaze on me for a while. Itching my face as I wondered how long she could keep this pointless charade up. After a while, I actually settled into getting some real work done.
About an hour later when I was getting ready to go to lunch, I stood up and fully intended to walk out of my cubicle and head straight to my car. I would not give this weirdo the satisfaction of glancing in her direction. I just couldn’t do it though. I couldn’t help myself … I peaked quickly at her and yelled in surprise.
Lindsey was still staring right fucking at me as drool was running down her chin. It’s like she hadn’t moved the entire time.
I walked over to her in order to ask her what was going on and her head followed my path. At least she wasn’t dead.
“Lindsey, are you okay? Umm…why are you, like… staring at me?”
She didn’t move. She stared right at the tattoo on my face.
“Heading to lunch? Where are you treating me?”, Caleb from contracts asked as he walked down the row of cubicles that I found myself standing in.
“Dude, what is going on with Lindsey? Do you see this? She will not stop staring at me!”, I asked him in exasperation.
“What’s going on?”, he asked. I pointed and looked back to her frozen form. She made no attempt to move whatsoever.
When I looked back to Caleb, he was facing me directly. He was staring straight at me with that same blank soulless expression.
“Fuck”, I mumbled and sprinted off the bathroom. I checked out my reflection in the mirror and the only thing that I could see was the area on my cheek with the tattoo was a little clearer and not as red. No sign of infection.
I left the office and didn’t come back to work for the rest of the afternoon.
The next day, I worked from home and things were a bit better. I made an emergency appointment for tattoo laser removal, but they were pretty booked. The next time they could see me was in a few weeks, so I’d have to deal with it for the time being. Plus, I was warned it usually takes several sessions to significantly dissolve the ink.
Maybe I was overthinking everything, but I swear I could feel everyone at the office talking about me.
At this point my tattoo was basically healed. It had that scribbled-on look like someone ran up to me on the street and drew this right on my face with a ballpoint pin. I guess if I were a rapper, it might be kind of cool. Instead I was some guy that spent most of his time trying to avoid attention.
The next morning, I pretty much accepted my ordeal with this whole thing. I thought, if I’m stuck with this thing, I might as well dress a bit cooler. So instead of the slightly overdressed business casual that I normally wear, I put on some trendy cargo pants and a “loud” pink fleece jacket that screamed look at me. If people were going to be looking, I figure I’d go all out. No room for embarrassment if I was rocking my edgy look.
At work that day, five people were waiting in the lobby. I never really noticed before how harsh the lightening was in the building but here, in that unwelcoming lobby with five other employees all staring at me, I realized how deathly white and blaring the lights were shining on me.
“What’s up losers?”, I said casually to the unresponsive gawkers.
I thought, maybe I could actually live with this for the next month or so if needed.
“Wow, you’re looking sharp!”
That voice…the voice of an “angel” named of Dina, caught me off guard. Dina is someone that is, without any doubt, 100% way out of my league. She surprised me as she walked in just after I did.
“Oh, thanks. You too!”, I told her completely devoid of any Rizz whatsoever.
I couldn’t believe it though, Dina and I started talking later that day. I even built up enough courage to ask her out to dinner. I was surprised when she said yes but even more surprised that she insisted we go out that evening.
The hastily setup date went great. She did most of the talking while I quickly and silently fell in love with her. She talked about her family, growing up in the middle east, moving to the states for college. She was actually really interesting.
Don’t ask me how I did it but we ended up back at her place.
“Do you mind if I give you a massage?”, she told me unexpectedly.
“Are you kidding, not at all…”, I told her. I was on the bed without my shirt. She wasn’t done surprising me though. She pulled out some overpoweringly fragrant essentials oils or something and started rubbing that on back.
It was way too strong of a smell but I went along with it.
I won’t go into any graphic details, but we slept together that night. I couldn’t believe my luck. What started off as the worst week ever was turning into the best.
I had a dream though that night that was somewhat disturbing. I dreamt that I was somewhere dark, completely pitch black. Like I was in some kind of void. I couldn’t move at all. I tried to scream but nothing came out. This felt like it lasted for hours until I could see a faint light in the distance. It looked like some kind of ship that was sailing away.
I woke up and immediately I could tell something was wrong. Dina was sort of kneeling over me and holding something to my nose. I could feel it push deep into my nostril as she whispered…
“n-wi wen DewiteK Wesir!”
She was fucking stabbing something in my nostril! I pushed her off and immediately scrambled up and bolted for the door. I looked back and saw her standing there, completely calm.
“Anuk pau hem. ek, Wesir…”, she said. She was holding a fucking chopstick in her hand! Worse, she looked horrifyingly calm for someone that had just tried to stab that thing up my nose!
“Dina, what the hell!”, I screamed at her. I was halfway out the bedroom door but stood there waiting. I was absolutely terrified of her.
Her face then shifted completely from one of calm to intense worry. She dropped the chopstick and then started to breathe rapidly.
“What…. Was I sleeping? Shit, I’m so sorry, I haven’t had a sleepwalking incident in so long. I’m so..so sorry”, she said before she broke out in a fit of sobs.
She looked so sad and vulnerable. I couldn’t just leave her there. I realized when I was looking at her that I was already hopelessly in love with her. Her reaction seemed genuine, but I didn’t know. I couldn’t just leave her there, so I played it off and said it was nothing.
Eventually we got back into bed and she cried on my shoulder. She eventually fell asleep while I stared at the ceiling the whole night. Obviously, I couldn’t do anything close to falling asleep that night after that. It felt good though just to be there with her.
Anyway, that’s the story. It’s only been a week, but she hasn’t had another incident since then. I think that’s a good sign, right? Am I being crazy or what? Do you think she might be trying to kill me or is this all some big misunderstanding?