Disclaimer: Due to the sexual content in this story, you must be 18 years of age or older to read this. This story contains elements of mind control and non-consensual sexual activity, so if you are offended by such things, do not read this. Instead I recommend something tame like “Starship Troopers” by Robert Heinlein or “Capitalism and Freedom” by Milton Friedman.
TATTOOED
by Lucky
1. ENCYCLOPEDIA
“Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopediaOh Lydia, the queen of tattoos...”
My name is Danielle Dean and I am 27 years old. I am a graphic illustrator and comic book artist by trade. At least I was, and I hope to get back to it soon. But there is a lot of work to be done, a lot of things to be taken care of before I can think about that again.
It started several months back. I rent a little loft in Chicago, my home town. Right near Lincoln Square, actually. I was working there one night when I felt a pain in my left forearm, like a repeating pin prick. It stung a bit, but I just rubbed it a little and chalked it up to circulation. It subsided, but in a few seconds it was back, and this time it seemed to be moving. My thought at the time: “Insect! Ick!” I immediately rolled up the sleeve of my sweatshirt to take a look. What I found was a dark marking, a small and intricate web of black lines interlaced with red and green. I rubbed it, thinking maybe it was ink or charcoal from my drawing, but it didn’t smudge. I looked closer, and I noticed something that really started to freak me out: it was growing. Wherever I felt the prickling, the black mass would appear. It was moving along my arm! I whipped out my old medical encyclopedia (I’m not quite a hypochondriac but given the number of things that can go wrong with the human body I like to be armed with easy access to knowledge.) After skimming synopses of various skin conditions I came up with nothing—this was beyond at least the knowledge of the authors. I took a deep breath and reached for the phone to call my friend Linda. Linda West is a doctor at Swedish Covenant, and an old friend of mine from college days. I hoped she would be on duty and available as I called the hospital. Luckily I was right on both counts, as they quickly patched me through.
“Dani,” she said, “what’s up?” There was a note of concern in her voice. Out of respect for her profession and the demands on her attention, I made a point of never calling her at work, so she must have thought it was urgent and perhaps medical. It was both.
“Linda,” I said with some relief. “I was wondering if you could see me tonight. At the hospital.”
“Absolutely, baby,” she replied soothingly. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve got this pain in my arm, and there’s a black mark there that’s getting bigger. I’m a little worried. Do you have any idea what it might be?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to do a diagnosis over the phone. Could be some kind of rash, an insect bite or something. Come in immediately.”
“Okay,” I said, crisply, trying to mask my growing concern.
“Are you going to be all right, getting here?”
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I should be there within a half an hour. Thanks, Linda.”
“No problem. It’s a slow night, I’ll meet you at reception.”
I hailed a cab and hopped in. The pain, although not really too bad, was unrelenting. I kept rubbing my arm, then reminding myself that if it was something like a rash I probably shouldn’t irritate it. Funny thing was, there was no pain, irritation or soreness anywhere but at the spot of the moving pinprick. The mark had now more than doubled in size, spinning out into an odd web-work of intricate lines. It looked strange... not the mishmash of spotty skin or vascular inflammation one usually sees in a rash or infection. It was almost mathematical. I had to stop looking at it, it was giving me the creeps. My panic was probably exacerbated by the degree to which I care about my body. I like having a nice body and being healthy. I go to the gym, I run, I eat very well. I’m 5′ 6″ and 110 lbs., and I plan to stay that way as long as possible. So when something goes wrong I do tend to overreact. But this was a situation that lent itself quite well to overreaction. I muttered something to the driver about this being the fastest we could go and he muttered something back about my panties being in a bunch. I let it go and proceeded to look out the window until we got there.
“Danielle!” said Linda loudly as I stumbled in. She waved me over. “Let me take a look.” She held my arm gently, guiding it under the light of the reception desk.
“Strange...” she said.
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean to worry you. It’s just... very unfamiliar. Let’s get you into an examining room.”
She led me up down the hall and sat me down on a hard, leathered table covered with paper, then began looking at it in earnest.
“Doesn’t look like any rash I’ve ever seen. Or infection, or... anything. Does it hurt?”
“Only here,” I said, pointing to the current position of the pinprick. “See, it’s moving. It hurts at the spot it’s growing from.”
Her eyes widened a little when she saw the lines forming. “How fast is it spreading?”
“It’s about four times the size of when I first noticed it.” I looked at her, trying to quell the growing panic.
“Okay,” she said, taking control. “I’m going to run a blood test, and do a biopsy. We’ll take a tiny sample of skin from that area.” She smiled. “You’ll never miss it.” I didn’t return the smile, and she put her hand soothingly on the back of my neck. “Sorry. Standard one-liner to set the patient at ease. You’re going to be fine, Dani. We’ll take care of you. I’ll take care of you.”
Now THAT did something to set the patient at ease. I smiled as a tear ran down my cheek. I didn’t realize how frightened I was growing.
“We’ll give you some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories, just in case. Now let’s get started.”
She unwrapped a fresh needle and started to go to work. I wanted to hug her. I couldn’t imagine going through this mystery, as seemingly innocuous as it was, without a friend behind the name-tag with the two snakes on it.
It was about forty-five minutes before she came back to see me. By this time, the black mark was about seven inches by three and had begun to move around my arm. I was feeling a little woozy from the meds, but I snapped to attention.
“Well, hon,” she said, sweeping her blond hair out of the way of her glasses, “your blood work-up came back fine. No infections, no elevated T-cells or anything. Cholesterol’s a bit high” she said with a playful glare that implied a rebuke on my omelet habits, “but whatever this is, it doesn’t seem to be a rash or an infection.”
“What does that leave?” I asked nervously.
She leaned on a table. “I’m going to be honest with you. I have no idea. It’s not a skin malignancy, I’m almost sure of that. There’s no swelling or pain, and it’s growing too fast.” She fell silent for a second. “I want to keep you here overnight. Until we get the biopsy results in the morning. Is that okay?”
I nodded glumly.
“Any pain or soreness?” she said, almost seeming to hope that there would be, that it might aid her floundering diagnosis. I shook my head. The pricking at the forefront remained, but the dark lines it left behind felt fine to me.
“Okay. They’re setting up a room for you now. Let me take a look.”
I showed her my arm again.
She smiled without humor. “I’m at a loss. I know that’s not what you want to hear.”
“What I want to hear, Linda, is the truth,” I said, forcing a smile. She returned it without having to force anything. Linda was a very good friend. I loved her then, for her care of me as well as her honesty. And the unspoken commitment she had made to seeing me through this oddness.
“Funny,” she said, almost to herself. She looked at me. “It looks so... deliberate. It almost looks like...”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Never mind. Come on, we’ll get you settled in. I’ll run by your apartment in the morning and get you some things for tomorrow.” She had a key.
“But you’re on the late shift,” I protested.
“Not while you’re here,” she replied. “In this place.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said without conviction. In truth I would have liked it if she spent the night. I’d rather have had a shattered leg than a seemi ngly harmless coloration that no one could explain. And I didn’t want to be left alone with it. But I wasn’t a baby and I could deal with it.
By the time I was settled in, the markings had almost wrapped my forearm in a spiral and were coming back around. The pain was still very local, and very dim. Surprisingly, I got right to sleep. The exhaustion of worry, perhaps, or the knowledge that in sleep I would not be forced to worry.
Linda woke me around nine or so. “Hey, Dani. How’d you sleep?”
I instantly heard it in her voice and saw it in her confused eyes. The mystery was about to deepen.
“Okay,” I said, rubbing my face. “Get the results back?”
“Yeah,” she said, absent-mindedly gesturing with a manila envelope. “But it looks like I didn’t need them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, shaking off sleep and sitting up. “What’s going on?”
“Well, Dani, the biopsy was rather conclusive.” She looked in the folder and then looked at me.
“Tattoo ink.”
It almost didn’t register. “What?”
“It’s tattoo ink. The black and red and green stuff. It’s tattoo pigment.”
“That’s... that’s impossible!” I protested weakly. “How... what....” I remembered something. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t need the results?”
She gestured at my arm. I looked at it. Nothing on earth could have prepared me for what I saw.
It was the most detailed, intricate, and beautiful tattoo I had ever seen. The mark from the previous night was the tail of a serpent of some kind. It spiraled around my arm several times. I pulled up the sleeve on the gown I had slept in. The mouth of a fantastic dragon was gapingly open on my shoulder.
“Linda,” I said, with slow, forced calm. “Why do I have a tattoo of a dragon?”
She just shrugged. “Neither of us are crazy, Dani. This is real, I saw it happening last night. And I’m pretty sure you didn’t nick out last night and get this thing finished.”
I was speechless. Somehow I had been spontaneously tattooed with extraordinary skill.
“So,” I said, trying to regain composure. “Now what happens?”
“Well”, she said, “I can arrange to have it removed. With lasers. They do it very well these days, little pain and virtually no scarring. I can pull a few favors and get you the discount rate of free.”
My mind was reeling. I had to find a sensible explanation, some thread of reason for this. The pain was gone. The tattoo was done. Was there any way to figure out where it had come from, or why it had happened? If it happened once, it could happen again. Would it really be worth the bother of getting it removed if it couldn’t be removed, if it just came back again?
“No,” I said. “Not right away. I need to figure something out. I need a theory.”
She nodded. “I understand. Well, then I would recommend you go home, take the day off, maybe go to the library. Read something about tattoos. I know I plan to.’
I nodded. I got up to get dressed.
“I know this tattoo artist, he’s incredibly knowledgeable. Maybe I’ll go visit him,” I said as I took my gown off and prepared to rummage through the bag she had brought for some clothes. “Or better yet, there was this guy I met in college. He knew about weird things...”
“Good idea,” she said. “Hey, when did you get that?”
“Get what?” I asked, preparing to throw a T-shirt on.
“That!” she said, pointing at my navel. I looked down.
There was a silver ring going through my belly button.
“I didn’t know you got that,” she said. “You never told me.”
I fingered it with my free hand. My belly button was pierced.
“I didn’t get that,” I said. “I didn’t have that yesterday.” I looked at her, and she at me. She got up from the bed and bent down to take a look.
“If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d say you got this months ago. It’s fully healed. This kind of piercing takes a long time to get this way.”
“I wouldn’t forget if I got a piercing!” I said loudly.
She looked up at me. “I know.”
We looked at each other for a second. I continued to get dressed.
“Linda, some strange things are happening to my body. I have to figure this out.”
“I’ll do what I can,” she said. I could tell from the tone that she had no idea what that would be. I didn’t either, but I finished dressing and hugged her tightly.
When I got home, I examined the ring more carefully. I turned it, pulling it through the pierced hole. The ring was unbroken. It could not be removed. I rummaged through my old tool-kit, coming up with a pair of wire cutters. I carefully tried to cut through the ring without cutting me. I ended up squeezing with all my might. The cutters were ruined, and I hadn’t even made a dent in the ring. I had to lie down.
Later, after a long shower, I spent some time looking at the tattoo. It was remarkable work. Whoever or whatever had done it could probably win some kind of a prize for it. I couldn’t tell the style. Was it Asian in influence? I didn’t know. This was disturbing.
I finally ended up throwing myself into my work, just to get my mind off things. It was all I could do. I sarcastically thought that probably only Leonard Nimoy or Fox Mulder could figure this stuff out, and besides, I had a deadline to meet and bills to pay. I worked until I couldn’t stay awake any longer, and crashed around 3 in the morning. The second my head hit the pillow, my phone rang. Aw, hell, I thought, planning to ignore it until I thought that it might be Linda so I grabbed it.
“Hello,” I said with annoyance and forced sleepiness.
“Hello, tattooed and pierced girl” said a husky voice. I sat straight up.
“Who is this!”
“These things that are happening, they are deliberate. And there is an explanation, I promise. But that will come later. When you are ready. When you have been prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” I started to feel terrified and queasy and... a little curious, and... almost aroused?
“You need fear nothing,” said the voice. “You will not be harmed but for your reaction to these mysteries.” Was it male or female? I couldn’t tell. “My advice is patience.” And then they hung up.
Patience? Prepared? “Hello!” I squealed with futility, then put the phone down reluctantly. Strangely, this development calmed me a bit. It added the smallest amount of rhyme and reason to my ordeal. My fears had a face now, or at least a voice—a husky, androgynous, almost hypnotic voice...
I tried to forget it all and turned over to sleep.
When I awakened and heard a jingling, I discovered the next morning how much more this person, or phenomenon, was capable of doing to me in my sleep than I had originally suspected. I looked down at myself. Though I had more pressing concerns than looking for them, the first thing I noticed was that I was naked—my nightie and underwear were gone. That had barely had time to register before I noticed the rest. My body was now covered with tattoos of the type that adorned my left arm. They covered my right arm now, as well, and the tattoos on both arms were more elaborate than the original. Intricate lines were woven with both dragons, extending up to the tips of my fingers—only my palms were bare. And similar graphics snaked around both legs, up my hips almost to my armpits. My torso was still a blank canvas. And then my attention turned to what had caused the jingling. My nipples had been pierced with rings similar to the one in my belly button, and I assumed they were just as unbreakable. A thin chain connected my nipple rings, and two chains extended from the nipples to a chain mesh belt that wrapped my waist. Two chains extended up from my nipples to several metal bands that circled my neck. I had rings on all fingers, several on each, that I could not get off with any kind of pulling. I also had several bracelets on each arm that would not pass my wrist. All of my toes and my ankles were similarly adorned with rings and bracelets.
I felt my face. My nose was pierced three times, one ring in the center and two studs on the sides. My eyebrows were pierced at the sides, and I could feel a barbell stud through my tongue.
And the capper was that my labia had been pierced, five rings on each side, and my clit as well, one large ring hanging from the center. All of this same metal that seemed so unbreakable.
I noticed other things: My pubes had been trimmed, perhaps permanently, leaving a small “Brazilian bikini wax” patch above my pussy. My legs felt smooth, with no trace of stubble, and my armpits too. In fact, when I felt myself, I did not notice any hair anywhere but for my pubic area and my head. I rushed to the bathroom to see myself in the mirror.
While my face was free of the kind of tattoos that were all over my body, I did have facial tattoos—thick, black eyeliner and ruby red lips, makeup that I had never applied.
And my eyes, brown from birth, were blue as lake water.
I was still naked, and it seemed as though my adorner had saved the best for last. For I left the pricking again, this time fast and insistent, and I saw patterns appearing on my breasts. Only this time, much faster, spreading like paper on fire. Intricate spirals went around and around my breasts, snaking off to my belly and back. Obviously I couldn’t see what was going on behind me (although very quickly I felt it on my ass) but I watched as the tattoos covered my stomach, growing and spreading, lower and lower...
I felt a gasp. Somehow I knew how it would end. I sat on the floor, legs spread, and watched the tattoos as they hit my pelvis and snaked toward the place it all had to end.
The pin pricks started to slow down as they neared my pussy. I actually felt heat from my groin, and my breath grew faster. What was happening to me, to my body? Was I getting wet? Was I actually aroused? The lines spiraled in on themselves, two inches away, now one, as I actually began to sign and writhe. This could not be happening! Then finally they hit—and I began to come. Hard. The lines were all over my tender pussy, darting in and out, and my clit was on fire. Almost involuntarily, I began to rub myself and moan. I could not resist this, whatever it was. I was hot and wet and I needed this badly. I felt wave after wave of exquisitely painful orgasm wash over me as I writhed with my legs spread, helpless. I had lost control of my body. I don’t know how long I lay there, five minutes, an hour... All I know is that I was lost in a torrent of unbidden pleasure and I had no notion of how to refuse it.
Finally, it was over, and the tattoo was done. I was covered from head to toe, branded and pierced to the specifications of a phantom. I could not remove the tattoos nor could I break the chains. I was someone’s personal freak now. Bound and marked.
And that was when things started to get REALLY weird.