Old Ink

The tattoo artist warned him about the ink.

“It’s old,” she said, rolling up her sleeves to reveal her own tattooed arms. They curled in black vines up to her shoulders, twisting around faded symbols. “Handed down through generations. It has a voice.”

But Jack was adamant. “That’s the idea,” he replied.

He wanted something unique, something to speak secrets into his skin. A ghostly script, an elegant script—something only he could understand.

The needle buzzed. The ink bled into his arm. The pain was sharp but bearable. As she worked, he swore he could hear something beneath the hum of the machine, a faint murmuring just on the edge of sound.

By the time it was finished, the words curled along his forearm in an ancient, flowing script. He ran his fingers over them. “What does it say?”

The tattooist hesitated. “Only the wearer ever knows.”

That night, Jack woke up to a voice breathing against his ear.

“Awake.”

He sat up. The room was still. His phone screen read 3:13 a.m. His curtains shifted slightly in a breeze he couldn’t feel.

He rubbed his arm, blinking in the dark. The ink felt warm under his fingers.

“Jack.”

The whisper didn’t come from the room. It came from his skin.

“Someone is in the apartment.”

His ears strained. Silence. Just the soft whirr of the fridge-freezer in the next room.

He almost laughed. It had to be his imagination. Some trick of the mind. Maybe he’d let the tattoo artist spook him.

Then, the floorboard creaked outside his bedroom door.

Another creak. Closer.

The voice on his arm spoke again.

“Run.”

He did. Out the window, onto the fire escape. His bare feet hit cold metal as he climbed down into the alley. When he reached the ground, he turned back.

Through the gap in his curtains, he could see the shape of a man standing in his bedroom. Motionless. Watching him.

Jack hurried away.

The ink of the tattoo pulsed with warmth.

“You’re welcome.”