Ink and Ember

Meghan 

The tattoo parlor on the south side became my only escape. I swept the dusty floors there just to breathe.

One slow afternoon, my sketchbook slipped from my apron pocket and lay wide open on the counter.

A rose. A raven. A wolf with eyes like lit matches.

The owner, a gray-bearded man named Gustavo, picked it up and flipped through the pages in absolute silence.

My stomach clenched tight. I waited for him to laugh, to tell me it was trash.

"Who drew these?"

"Me," I whispered, barely loud enough to hear.

He studied me for a long, heavy moment. 

Then, with a slow nod, he pointed to an empty chair and handed me a heavy tattoo machine.

"Show me."

My first customer was a nervous college boy who wanted a tiny sparrow on his wrist. My fingers shook violently through the first line. But then, something inside me went quiet and steady, and the needle moved like it was breathing.

When the boy looked at the finished bird, he grinned like a kid on Christmas morning.

"It looks alive," he breathed.

For the first time in months, someone looked at me and didn't see a mistake, a burden, or a failure. I walked home that night with black ink under my fingernails and a secret smile I couldn't hide.

Matt looked at my stained hands and said nothing.

But I felt his eyes follow me all evening—slow, heavy, and calculating, like a man measuring something he already owned.

That was also where I met Ashley.

She was an apprentice too, all bright red hair and watercolor flowers painted up one arm. She was loud, fiercely friendly, and I was wary of her from day one. People who were kind for free usually wanted something later.

So, I watched her.

I watched her peek at my sketchbook when she thought I wasn't looking, and I snapped it shut. 

Every morning, she slid a fresh cup of coffee across my station, and every morning, I let it go cold. She never complained. She just showed up the next day with another one.

On the fourteenth morning, I finally picked it up and drank. Ashley didn't say a word. 

She just smiled quietly into her own cup.

One afternoon, she knocked over a bottle of black ink, and it spilled across the counter like a dark storm. She stared at it, then at me, and burst out laughing. A bubble of real laughter climbed my throat, and I swallowed it hard.

Not yet.

We shared burnt coffee and ruined stencils. She told me her dream of owning her own shop one day, and I told her mine.

"It should be called something fierce," she said.

"Ink and Ember," I replied softly.

Her face lit up. "That's the one."

She scribbled the name on a napkin with a purple marker and stuck it to the wall above the sink. We stared at it like it was already a real neon sign.

Yet, I still held back. Trust had to be tested. I had learned that lesson the hard way, from the very people who had once promised to protect me.

My test came after the worst night yet.

Matt had left me with a swollen lip and bruised ribs. I stumbled into the shop at dawn, half-crying, and pulled Ashley straight into the supply closet.

"If anyone comes looking for me," I whispered, my teeth chattering, "you haven't seen me."

"Meg, what happened?" she gasped.

"Please. Just say it."

She searched my battered face, the truth dawning in her eyes. Then she nodded, firm and steady.

An hour later, I crouched quietly among the paint boxes as heavy boots echoed on the floorboards. A man's voice, one of Matt's enforcers cut through the dust.

"Where's Meghan?"

"Haven't seen her," Ashley said, her voice ringing out clearly.

"Don't lie to me, redhead."

"I'm not." Her voice shook, but she didn't back down an inch. "She's not here."

I heard a hard shove and a crash as something hit the wall. Ashley gasped, but she refused to give me away. Finally, the heavy boots turned and left.

When she pulled the closet door open, her sleeve was torn and her arm was bleeding. She didn't care. She knelt beside me in the dark and pressed ice to my lip, her fingers trembling.

"I told you, I'm here," she whispered.

That was the moment I broke. I cried into her shoulder for ten minutes, and she held me together like a sister. After that day, I let her all the way in. She was the only loyal soul I had left in the world.

A year later, Ashley and I sat cross-legged on the floor of the shop after hours, counting our hard-earned cash.

"We could really do it, Meg," she said, her eyes bright with hope. "Our own place."

Ashley stacked quarters into a wobbly tower on the floor between us. Every time it tipped and fell, she laughed and started over.

"It costs too much," I murmured.

"Then we ask Matt."

My stomach flipped violently. "I can't."

"Meg." She squeezed my fingers. "You're braver than you think."

So, that night, my heart hammering like a trapped bird, I asked him. I told him about the lease and our dream, bracing myself for the back of his hand.

Matt set down his fork.

The kitchen went so dead silent I could hear the refrigerator humming. His dark eyes moved over my face, my trembling hands, the way my fingers twisted together in my lap.

Then, slowly, he smiled. It was a thin, sinister smile that never reached his eyes.

"I'll fund it," he said.

My breath caught in my throat. "You will?"

"On one condition." He stood up, stepping close until his palm slid around the back of my neck, gentle as a lover's, but firm as a leash. "You work for me. Whatever I say, whenever I say it. The shop is yours on paper. But you are mine."

It was a deal with the devil, and I knew it.

I said yes anyway.

His thumb pressed into the soft spot beneath my ear, just hard enough to leave a bruise. "Good girl," he whispered.

When Ashley heard the terms, she went entirely still. Then she reached out and took my hand, her fingers unnaturally cold.

"I'm in," she whispered, her voice tight. "Whatever it costs."

I squeezed her fingers, overflowing with gratitude and vulnerability. But

in the dim light of the doorway, I never saw the way Ashley's eyes drifted past me, locking onto the man waiting in the shadows.