Arsen Rauv {D2}

A tattoo parlor is nestled between a pawn shop and a family-owned grocery store about a mile away from the District Square. When customers walk inside, a little bell jingles and alerts the nearest employee. Today a couple rings the bell during a dead shift, and the boy with dark hair stationed in front of the register raises his head. "Hi there," the woman says. She is holding a piece of paper, and the boy knows what that means. "I'd like this on my right shoulder." She slaps the paper down on the table. A screaming crow is sketched on the surface, shaded and detailed.

"Can I redraw it?" the boy says. His coworker is organizing inks by color in the back, and glances over his shoulder at the trio.

"Why? Is it bad?" the woman asks

"No, I'm just better at drawing."

Something in his monotone voice pinches a nerve in her face; why else would she have grimaced at him?

"Yeah, go ahead," her boyfriend pipes up. That is permission enough, so he snatches the paper and slouches over a table in the corner of the shop. His coworker abandons his station and approaches the baffled couple. "Is he always so rude?" The woman whispers. The boy can recognize gossiping whispers when he hears them, but he doesn't lift his pencil.

"Most of the time, yeah. He used to be a lot better but you know, stuff happens."

Five minutes later the boy calls the couple over to his station and presents the new and improved masterpiece. "My name is Arsen, and I'll be taking care of you today," he says, as standard procedure. The man chortles in response. "Isn't that a crime? Arson? Like when you set things on fire?"

Arsen stares at him without blinking.

"Erm, nevermind.." The man clears his throat.

"So, the right shoulder?"

"Yeah.."

---

When I was eleven, dad sat me down and told me about the world. He said it was a bad place to live but as long as I blended in and kept my mouth shut I'd survive. He taught me how to dress and how to walk with a confident swagger in our neighborhood so people would leave me alone. We don't live in the safest place. Most of of the streetlights are broken and there's a lot of crime in our corner of the District. As long as I look and sound intimidating, people won't question my place. We have the money to move into a nicer house, but dad said it would be suspicious because of his business. He told me what that business was too, and what mom used to be. It all made sense. It was like all of the puzzle pieces fitting together for the first time, instead of me trying to shove the wrong ones into each other.

Dad is a procurer. He had to explain to me what that was. It's a man who has people working for him, and those people have sex with other people for money. There are good and bad ways to label them. Whores and sluts are the bad terms, and prostitute can also sound offensive. Dad says to call them his clients, or just sex workers. Mom used to be one of his workers, but they fell in love and she decided to drop that job to marry my dad. She says there's no shame in it. It's a sure way to get money, but not a path I'm ever allowed to take.

Now I know why I was never allowed to answer the front door. They didn't want me to meet the workers. Dad even told me to stay in my room when one of them was over so he could meet with them in peace. One time I cracked my bedroom door open and watched a woman in a short dress talk to my dad about money. She had red lipstick on, and her hair was pretty. I remember her shoes looking uncomfortable. She turned her head and saw me peeking through the crack, and smiled at me. "Looks like I have a peeper," she said, and then I tried to make myself smaller when my dad appeared around the corner. "Shouldn't you be in your room?" he asked, and I remember chewing my lip and saying "I am in my room."

He just laughed at me and said "Fair enough." Then he politely asked me to go to bed because I had school the next day.

---

"How old is your son?"

"Fourteen."

Arsen idly stared at the clock on the wall. It was almost noon. He was standing next to his mother surrounded by white walls. It was an isolated area of the medical center, where a woman in white was holding a clipboard and scribbling down information. "Does he have any allergies?" she asked. Her voice sounded automated, like she wasn't real.

"No," his mother said.

"That's it then, he qualifies for the study."

After ten minutes of paperwork and questions, they were finally here. Arsen didn't know what "here" was, but it was for money. His dad's business had been in a downward spiral for months, and the lack of income was going to leave them in debt if they didn't find additional profit in the meantime. Mom said it was a medical study run by Peacekeepers to test a new sedative for prisoners. The nurse - who also worked in the Detention Center - warned him that he would be sedated for an hour. Once he woke up, he was free to leave until their next meeting. They would meet two times a weak until the conclusion of the study. One meeting was for receiving the sedative, and the other was for reporting side effects. They would receive payment for each visit.

His mother was wary.

"There's no risk of it killing him, is there?"

"No, not at all. There is no chance of death or paralysis, but discomfort from side effects is possible."

All he had to do was endure the sedation, and keep it a secret. The study was private, and therefore could not be revealed to the general public. Arsen signed a form before they jammed a syringe into his arm.

---

I woke up groggy. Mom was reading a Capitol magazine in the corner of the room and stood up when she saw me squirming. "Hey honey, how are you feeling?" It might've been the drug, but it sounded like my mom was singing to me. I just swallowed a wad of spit and said I felt tired. When the nurse came in she sat me up slowly and offered me a glass of water. I snapped out of it pretty quickly, and then I felt fine. They sent me home with a piece of bubblegum.

I didn't feel any side effects until later that evening. I woke up in the middle of the night with pain shooting up my right arm, like something under my skin was burning. I didn't want mom to worry so I bit the end of my pillow to quiet the screams, and then when I couldn't take it anymore I took a hot shower hoping it would relax my muscles and flush out the pain. I felt a little better afterward but it still hurt for another hour. I don't remember falling asleep after that but I did, and then I woke up for school. My arm wasn't burning but there was a dull ache for the entirety of the day. It's a good thing I'm left-handed.

Something else happened too. My right eyelid started twitching uncontrollably for no reason. I was in the middle of class trying to write notes. It didn't hurt, but it was frustrating and distracting. When I asked the teacher to slow down she noticed the twitching and asked me what was wrong. Then everyone else noticed too. By the end of the day, everyone was staring at me, wondering why my eyelid wouldn't stop having spasms.

It went away after sunset, but then it happened again the next day.

I reported my side effects to the nurse. I went home with two pieces of bubble gum that day. I didn't let mom hear any of it because I didn't want to worry her. I just wanted her to walk away with some money.

When I visited for my next dosage, they said it had been modified. I hope it meant less pain and no twitching, but I woke up in the middle of the night again with more burning. My eyelid continued to twitch at random parts of the day, for an unspecific amount of time. I eventually earned the nickname "twitch" because of it.

After I complained enough about it, I finally received a dose that didn't make me want to chop my right arm off. Instead it was my left thigh, right where the thigh bone meets the hip socket. I was afraid I was gonna have to limp to school the next morning, but it went away. Every time I reported side effects, I watched the nurse scribble on her paper but nothing really changed for a few months. When all of the pains finally went away, I was relieved.

Except they weren't actually gone.

There was permanent damage. I can't raise my right arm above my head without feeling the old burns, and I can't step backward on my left leg or the same thing happens. It hurts like hot needles, and I can't do it. Falling isn't uncommon for me now. Stepping backward is something the body does naturally.

For a long, long time after that there were no new side effects to report.

I got a job of my own. I've always been a good artist, and drawing is one of my favorite pastimes when I'm at home. The eyelid twitching always got in the way, but that happens only rarely now, usually when I cry. I became an apprentice at the tattoo parlor and trained to become one of their employees. It's my favorite thing in the world. It can get stressful when customers cry or can't handle the needle or try to yell at me for doing a "bad job" (I never create anything less than beautiful), but otherwise I love it. The pay is pretty average, nothing special, but I like having my own money.

I also got a girlfriend. It was unbelievable when she asked me out, because I was sixteen and still known as "twitch" even though the eyelid spasms had stopped long ago. I honestly never thought any girl or guy would approach me after the twitching business (and the few times I fell on my ass in the hallway because of my stupid left leg). Her name was Emelia, and I remember everything about her.

---

Four months after he met Emelia he brought her into the tattoo parlor. His smile was giddy and his body was jittery, hand entwined with hers as he approached his coworker - Matteo - at the counter. The shift was lifeless, all chairs empty and the room consumed by silence. "Hey," he said, and Matteo finally glanced up and raised his eyebrows. "Oh, you're here," he replied, then he clocked him in by marking their log sheet. Arsen was about to start a long shift, but he had thought it best to finally bring Emelia and introduce her to his coworkers.

"I want you to meet my girlfriend, Emelia," he said. He was usually secretive, but they had heard enough about her to be able to recognize her right away.

Matteo stared blankly at him. He didn't even acknowledge the beautiful girl beside him.

"Are you on drugs or something?"

He blinked. "No? You know I don't use."

Matto squinted at him. One of his female coworkers piped up behind him. "You think we should take him to see a doctor?"

"What? I'm fine! I'm not taking any drugs."

"Arsen," Matteo said carefully, "There's nobody here."

Flustered, Arsen dismissed the thought immediately and turned his head. Instead of Emelia, he was looking at the glass front door with the neon sign that read "Open" on the outside. His expression dropped, and he turned back to Matteo. Matteo watched him stare off into space for two minutes, until the front door opened and the bell jingled. Arsen didn't budge.

Matteo cleared his throat and walked away from the counter. "I can help you over here," he said. They sent Arsen home early.

---

The sedative fucked with my head. One of the happiest parts of my life had been an illusion, and it freaked me out. I cried myself to sleep one night and my eyelid twitch returned to haunt me. I was still a subject in the study and I couldn't escape, I signed a contract. It didn't end until they said it ended. I started questioning what was real and what wasn't. When I reported it to the nurse she told me to wear a rubber band on my arm, and snap it against my wrist every time I thought something was suspicious. She told me to focus on the pain, and focus on the object or person and tell myself it wasn't real. If it wasn't real, it would disappear.

It worked when I saw Emelia again at the market.

The study didn't end until I was seventeen. Three years of getting stabbed with a needle once a week (it became once every two weeks toward the end of the study) would finally end. Dad's business was back on its feet again, and it was perfect timing because mom was nine months pregnant. I was at work when she went into labor, so I missed everything. I got to visit her afterward though, and I met my baby sister Alison.

---

He slipped through the front door and found his dad sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of liquor. Arsen dropped his bookbag on the couch and smiled. "Hey, where's mom?" He draped his arms over the back of an empty chair and stretched his back muscles. His dad took one last swig and slammed the bottle on the table, leering at him behind an angry lens that turned Arsen stiff.

"Stop fucking doing that," he growled.

Arsen blinked at him and stepped back on his right leg. Not the left, not the left. "Doing what?"

"Stop - stop doing whatever it is you're doing. I don't know if you're in denial or if you're just messed up from those damn prison drugs, but I'm sick of it."

He fumbled with the hem of his shirt, uncertain of how to respond. It wasn't his fault he was screwed up, he hadn't known things would end up like this. But what did that have to do with mom?

"What's going on?" he asked warily.

Dad slammed his fist down on the table. Arsen didn't flinch, but his eyes stretched wide open. "Mom is dead!" his dad bellowed, "She died in the hospital while you were at work. The baby killed her, they're both dead. They were never here. You've been talking to the walls for a week!"

Arsen stepped back on his left foot and collapsed.

---

A year later he sits front of the couple in the tattoo parlor and attempts to create the screaming crow. The woman whimpers and squirms whenever his needle makes contact with her skin, so he pauses. "Stop moving, you're going to ruin it," he says. He then sighs turns toward her boyfriend."Can you hold her down?"

"Hold her down, what? I'm not going to hold her down!"

"Why not?"

The man blinks at him like he's a ghost. "Where is your manager?"

"Over here," Matteo says.

"Good luck trying to get me fired," Arsen drawls. "Now, can you stop moving? The tattoo wont turn out right if you move."

The woman finally gets her shit together, and he finishes his masterpiece.