Page 14 of Sparks of Insanity
“Dads? What’s going on?” Thank fuck for Em, who was suddenly standing at the other end of the hallway, hands on her hips, looking thankfully more put together than she had earlier in the day. She’d fixed her makeup after her crying fit, thank fuck, because it would have been a dead giveaway.
“Hey Chica, we’re just checking in with good old Mr E, seeing how you’re doing,” Gray said, smiling gently in her direction.
“I call bullshit. Are you seriously threatening the man who comes here daily to help your daughter work towards passing essential exams for her future? That doesn’t seem like the best way to help me ‘succeed’, now does it?”
Her dads chuckled, stepping away from me, with a hearty slap on my back from Gray, that nearly sent me headfirst out the front door as I left.
I made my escape to my car as quickly as possible, taking a moment before I started the engine, because it seemed almost unbelievable now that any of that had just happened, but yeah,her dads really were threatening me against the one thing I knew I’d almost done, and was still worried I’d be unable to resist doing.
Should I really be too afraid of two older guys who were just fathers to a whole load of kids? Something about the way they just behaved told me I should be more than worried or afraid. I should be absolutely terrified.
9
Ember
Over the next fewdays, I focused on finishing my homework and study stuff, because no matter what happened between me and Mr E, I still wanted to get those damn exam qualifications I’d been working towards. I didn’t want to be forever the loser who had to drop out of school after school, until I was finally banished from the last one. I needed those grades to get jobs, right? Even if I had no idea what kind of jobs I wanted.
“Hey Chica? Can I come in?” Dad Gray was in the doorway with a box in his arms, gift-wrapped with a bow on it.
“Yeah, sure. What’s up?”
He placed the box on my bed, and sat on the other side of it.
“Your mum and dad and me, we were thinking that you’re uh… you’re doing really well lately, and we wanted to treat you. Before you open it, I just want to say that we’re so proud of you, Em. You’re way more of a badass than any of us were atyour age.” I’d never really seen dad Gray look this uncomfortable before, not because he didn’t believe what he was saying, but because him speaking without his iconic smirk on his face was just weird.
“Uh thanks? I haven’t even done my exams yet though. I might still fail them,” I whispered, because my focus was too much on the man teaching me now, instead of the studies I knew I had to focus on.
“Look, I know things have been hell for you, and I wish we’d been able to prevent all of that stuff, so you could just be getting on with your life like others your age, but what we can do is help you in the future. I know you’ve been focused on your art, and honestly, it’s so fucking good, I feel like others should see it, but-”
“Don’t show anyone, please! It’s… I haven’t drawn anything I want others to see, dad.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course, because every day I drew things for Mr E, and every day, he tucked them into his bag when he left, so yeah, those were his. I didn’t know if he kept them, or just binned them when he got home, but I liked to think he treasured them.
“This one was particularly good, but for some reason you trashed it?” Dad held up the crumpled sketch of Suzy the bitch being shattered like glass, and even with my angry lines through it, you could see enough to see what it was.
“Oh… yeah, that was… it went wrong.”
“I can’t see anything wrong with it, Chica. I think it’s fucking awesome,” dad said, gazing at the pic with a grin. “In fact…yeah… open the box.”
He nudged the parcel closer to me, and confused as fuck, I did as he said and tore at the paper, to be greeted by a plain box inside it. When I lifted the lid though… oh my god. What the fuck?
“Dad… this is…”
“Look, the second I saw this, I was like, it’d make an amazing tattoo… so yeah, just in case you wanna try that out for reals…” I was looking at a tattooing gun, with inks and accessories I couldn’t even figure out yet. Tattooing? Why didn’t I think of that? My dads had loads of them, and Blaze? My god, Blaze had covered most of his body with the damn things. I could tattoo people… oh god, people…wait.
“I know what you’re thinking, but you could practice on me, yeah? I don’t have many on my arms, so you could, I mean, I like this shattered effect. You could put flames on the glass shards or something? That’d look cool.”
“But dad-”
“If you make a mistake, it won’t matter, Chica. I’ll wear it with pride anyway, because you painted it. What do you say?”
Tattooing people. PEOPLE. Dad was saying I could start with him, but I hadn’t even let my dads, or my mum, touch me since what that bastard did to me, so how could I touch anyone to tattoo them?
“See, the beauty of it is this,” dad muttered, pointing to the contents of the box, “gloves, so you don’t actually need to touch anyone, and you can rest on things so you touch as little as possible, plus, of course… you’ll have this stabby bastard between you and them. Anyone gets fresh, just tattoo a fucking hole in them, see?” Suddenly I was filled with hope, because maybe just maybe, I could do this after all.
“And I could… you’d let me do one on you first?” Dad’s face lit up as he smiled wide, those small lines around his eyes deepening with his pleasure.
“Fuck yeah. I’d have the first ever tattoo by the next big star of the tattooing world! My arm would be worth millions, but I wouldn’t let any fucker cut it off, because… well, that’s my favourite arm. I use it for all kinds of things.”
“Ew, okay, enough of that. Dad, this is pretty amazing, thank you! I need a little time to look it all over and plan, and I need to re-sketch that for you, because it’s shit.” I snatched the piece of paper from his hand, screwing it up again.
