It's half past twelve.

It's sure hot outside.

Summer comes early this year.

You're gonna have your first tattoo today.

When you walk into the tattoo parlor for the first time, the buzzing sound from the machines will tip you off.

It's not until that very buzzing sound that you settle into the fact that something in you will change forever from this moment onward.

Some might think it's a bit dramatized.

That it's just a tattoo.

But think about it.

Think about all the marks on your body.

They are involuntary.

You grow older.

They're predestined.

Times only flow forward.

They're expected.

Tear and wear of life spare no one.

But now, now you decide to clash heads with the relentlessness of nature for the fundamental right to reinvent yourself.

You're making a remarkable attempt to exert your free will against the vast mysteries that lie before you.

Would the thought scare you?

Yes, it would.

It'd be too big of a leap that despite the friendly greetings from the tattoo artist, you can't help but feel jumpy.

Restless, you stand before a wall adorned with framed photographs of customers and their tattoos.

You wonder what they mean.

Is it an accessory?

An act of rebellion?

A silent grieving?

A totem of healing?

Or simply a mark of impulsive decision making?

Do they feel a haunting regret burgeoning in the days after, when the ink dries out and the realization settles in that there's no going back?

As the tattooist prepares the equipment before her workstation, you think of running out the door.

You can always explain it later, come up with some family emergency, or simply avoid this tattoo parlor forever.

Just bolting right out the door, and things will be back into orbit.

You'd convince yourself that you're comfortable with the way things are, and that they call it a comfort zone for a reason.

The preparation is done.

The artist dons her gloves and waits for you at the tattoo tables.

You try to keep yourself collected, but your body trembles with dizzying anxiety that threatens to immobilize you.

You quiver as if before you is the edge of a precipice where thousands are crowding and cheering and endeavoring to plunge you into the abyss beyond which there is no light, no darkness, just nothingness stretching on indefinitely.

There's no way up from that abyss.

The abyss beckons.

You imagine falling days and months and years and centuries without ever reaching the bottom.

Overwhelming, all-consuming.

The only thing you hear is your heart beating faster.

The distance between you and the tattoo table is unfathomably long.

Your heartbeat grew incredibly loud.

But there's no going back now.

The only way to move is forward.

In your mind, you jump.

The needle roars, piercing through flesh and skin.

It hurts more than you expect.

You feel a pulsing resistance coming under your skin, as if trying to protect itself from the intrusion.

But the needle persists with unwavering precision.

A slight burning sensation?

Your eyes are fixed on the needle as it snakes along, excavating the skin to reveal the contour of a hidden like a forgotten oath.

The needle dances in the rhythm of ink and blood.

The tattooist pauses, wipes, pauses, and wipes again, following an inaudible harmony that you begin to acclimate to.

She tells you about her favourite tattoo.

It was a Niels Bohr's model of atoms.

The physicist once told that a part of eternity lies within reach of those capable of staring, unblinking, at the seas deranging expanses.

You like it very much.

Staring into the abyss might be your new thing now.

She also told you a story about a doctor who always keeps the tattoos of cadavers.

A cadaver, she explains, is a dead human body donated for scientific or medical research.

The doctor believes that the tattoos serve as a reminder that these cadavers were once living beings with beating hearts and breaths in their lungs.

On that physical shell, not only time, but also ink could reflect their life and existence.

Making conscious choices to permanently alter their bodies is the most human thing, she says.

And she's right.

It's beautiful that even after death, a visual testament of your free will lingers on earth, even if only for a little longer.

You watch the rhythm of blood and ink and needle on your skin, but it no longer looks like a macabre mess of chemicals, body fluid, and haunting anxiety.

It looks like a declaration of freedom etched on your skin.

An extremely loud and incredibly subtle demand for freedom, that despite inevitable oblivion, you can always find the absolute liberty within your own skin to assert that you're here, and this is all you, and no one can take it from you.

As the chat goes on, you notice the absence of pain.

The buzzing sound blends into the background, unassuming.

Time blurs away.

When you walk outside the parlor, it's still a beautiful day.

Here is pain and discomfort on one hand, yet at the same time, you're light at heart.

Shackle free.

Finally.

And now you're gonna go have a double cheeseburger.

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