The Devil's Tattoo

Copyright © 2013 Nicole R.
Taylor

Kindle
Edition – published 2013

All
rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the
written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents
either are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All song
titles, song lyrics, products and band names mentioned in this book are the
property of the sole copyright owners.

Cover Design:
©
Christa Holland - Paper and Sage Designs

Paperback ISBN:
1490969497

Paperback
ISBN-13:
978-1490969497

You can holler, you can wail

You can swing
,
you can flail

You can f**k like a broken sail

But I’ll never give you up,
If
I ever give you up

My heart will surely fail

-
Future
Starts Slow
, The Kills

CHAPTER One

Zoe

"Zoe Granger!
I knew I
recognised
those hot legs of yours."

I looked down
at my black skinny jeans and combat boots and shrugged.
That
slick looking busker with the guitar there?
That's my best friend Dylan,
but I call him Dee. Everyone does and I always have.

"Sup
Dee, making any cash today?"

Pointing to
the blue velvet interior of his guitar case, he wiggled his eyebrows. "
There’s
a couple of
tenners
in
there,
Zo
Zo
. The Milky
Bars are on me tonight."

He threw an
arm around me, tugging on my hair and planted a kiss on my cheek. I breathed in
his familiar scent of leather and musk and pushed him off with a playful shove.
I have long dark brown hair that hits my lower back and wearing it in a braid
is better than brushing it most days when I roll out of bed at five am for
work.

Dee and I
have been best friends since year seven. We were both about twelve then. The
first year of high school we were both awkward outcasts and we just fit
together. We ended up in different classes, but still managed to hang out every
chance we got. Now, we're both twenty-four and I can't remember a week going by
where I didn't speak with him. I can't even remember us having a fight that
lasted more than an afternoon.

The brisk
mid-afternoon Melbourne swelled around us along with the sickly sweet smell of
the natural cosmetics and soap shop Dee's currently out front of. How he
managed to sweet talk the girls in there to plug in his amp for free, I'll
never know. I'd bet anyone anything that they all have an epic crush on him.

Dee busked here
almost every day. He's the
die hard
musician type.
Always on the lookout for his big break into stardom, but truthfully he earns a
bucket load playing on the street. That's the reality of being Dee. The awkward
kid from high school grew up to be a smooth talking, handsome, tattooed man.
When the hell did that happen?

"You off
work for today?" he asked, propping his guitar against the shop front.

"Yeah,"
I said and buried my hands in the pockets of my leather biker jacket. I worked
in the mailroom of a building up on William Street, the business end of the
city, sorting mail for a law firm. It's not glamorous, but they don't care what
I wear or that I have an arm full of tattoos as long as I do my job and exit by
the side door. They learned quick smart that I put my head down and worked and
for what must be the first time in history, they rewarded me with a slackened
dress code.

"
Wanna
play with me? I'll take vocals," he asked.

"Hell,
no."

The last year
and a half had been hard. The only thing that kept me on the up and up was my
guitar. I just couldn't face the world anymore and the only one who stuck
around was Dee. He gave me his beat up black Stratocaster to practice on,
promising that it would take my mind off all the bullshit that had happened.
And he was right on the money. I played every day, got blisters on my fingers,
sat there for
hours
nutting out some silly chord
progression that should have been simple until I got it. I moved onto harder
things and worked those out on my own, too. And soon enough, life got a little
easier as well. I still hid from the world in my own shell, but I didn't dwell
on those things as much.

As I got better and better with the guitar, I decided to buy my own and
give Dee's back.
I now had a matte black
Epiphone
Les Paul with
a pedal collection to rival Jack White's and Dee was jealous as hell. He still
tried to get me to busk with him, but I still decline and it's like a running
joke now. Hey
Zo
,
wanna
play with me? Hell, no.

Dee laughed
and shook his head. "One day I'll have you up there on a bloody stage,
chicken."

"In your
dreams, buddy."

He wiggled
his eyebrows at me again. "I have the best dreams.
Wanna
hear one?"

"Ugh,"
I screwed up my face in disgust. "No thanks."

He bent down
and started scraping the coins and notes from his case. "I'm cutting it
early today. Are you going home?"

"Yeah,"
I shrugged. "Do you
wanna
go get a drink
later?"

"Sure.
Anything to spend time with a hot woman."

No wonder the
girls fall over themselves when he's around with a mouth like that.
"You'll never get a girlfriend if you keep flirting with me like that. You
know I'm a dead end."

"If I'm
still single at forty, I'm proposing to you."

I can't help
but laugh as I went to retrieve the other end of the amp's power cord.
"Deal."

After Dee's
done blowing kisses to the girls in the shop, we walk the three blocks down to
Flinders Street to catch the train home.
Dee with his guitar
and case full of shrapnel and me with the amp.
It's only a small thing,
so I don't mind carrying it into the station.

Dee lives in
Prahran
with dodgy roommates and I live across the highway
in St Kilda in a
one bedroom
shoebox. We're both
within ten minutes of the same station and it makes getting home by cab a hell
of a lot cheaper. And riding the train is more eventful with someone to share
it with. I wasn't the kind of person who made friends easily. I guess you could
put it down to a few bad experiences. Trust is a hot commodity in the world of
Zoe Granger, outcast extraordinaire.

We sat on a
seat on the open platform, waiting for the next
Sandringham
train as people walk past us. There's nothing out of the ordinary about that.
It was something we did all the time. I knocked off work and go find Dee in the
city and we share the ride home. A group of girls walked past and giggled,
eyeing him as they passed. The thing about Dee is that he looks like he's in a
band even if he is only walking down the street with his slicked back
quiff
and sunglasses and all. He’s smooth as hell.
Total ladies man.
Sometimes I think I'm jealous of the
attention he got.

I snort and
look the opposite way and see someone interesting coming down the escalators.
My eyes don't focus at first, but my brain registers that this guy is worth a
second look, but Dee elbowed me.

"Train's
comin
'."

I stand and
watch the lights of the train approach through the tunnel and the guy passed us
on the platform. He's a typical indie looking guy with a shock of long curly
hair in his eyes.
Eyes that looked at us indirectly.
You know when you want to check someone out, but at least attempt to be a
little covert about it? He's trying at least. Me, I stared at him as he walked
by. He looked very familiar and I wondered where I'd seen him before.

Dee looked at
him over his glasses. “You know him?”

I shrugged,
“Isn’t he in that band, The Stabs?”

“Yeah. Bass
player.” I can tell Dee is disinterested.

At that
moment the train pulled into the platform and we dragged the gear into the
carriage.

Me and guys?
Well, that was something that I didn't go near anymore.
And guys in bands?
That was something I especially didn't go
near. I absently rubbed the scar on my arm through the sleeve of my jacket and
settled into a free seat next to Dee. Yeah, I definitely didn't need a guy.

Dee and I
frequented this bar off Chapel Street, mainly for the cheap drinks and
especially not for the decor. It's called Ted's Shed and it looked exactly
like its title. They serve Mexican food and alcohol. The place isn't exactly
upper class, but the people are friendly and it's within our price range.
Because of this, it's always crammed with a lot of young locals.
Students, artists, hipsters.
 The posters on the wall
are either Hawaiian themed or some kind of tattoo art and every now and then
there is a fake potted plant strategically placed to hide a pole or an ugly
wall of corrugated iron. There are plastic hula girls on the bar and it's
decorated with fake flowers. This place is what you call ironic.

When I'm
feeling down, I come here and get a
fluro
coloured
cocktail. Eight bucks gets you a sugar hangover
and a few hours of ignorant bliss. Dee sat with me at a lopsided table in the
corner. He's scowling at his bright pink drink like it'll sprout wings and
steal his manhood. Mine is orange and it's already starting to help.

I stroked the
scar on my arm hidden in amongst the Japanese dragon that's tattooed there and
I don't
realise
I'm doing it until Dee narrowed his
eyes at me. When I broke it, it was the beginning of the end and it's never
healed one hundred percent. I covered up something ugly with something
beautiful.

"Is your
arm worrying you?" Dee asked, watching my fingers.

"No,"
I shook my head and let my hand fall away. It's a nervous gesture I'd developed
more than anything. My arm aches sometimes, but nothing bad.

A group of
girls across the bar laugh loudly and I looked over. Sometimes I think I'm
dragging Dee down by being such a mess. I feel bad about it, but I know that
without him, I'd be in a much worse place than I currently am. And right now,
I'm just coasting and I guess that's better than sinking.

I looked over
at the group of girls again as they put on their coats and I
recognised
Beth amongst them. I don't know who the others
are, but Beth I'd
recognise
anywhere. She's the super
alternative
goth
type, with
long black hair and Bettie Page fringe. She looks like a pin up model even when
she's in her gym gear.

"Isn't
that…?" Dee began to ask and I elbowed him.

I hope she
doesn't see us and goes the other way. I can't take her judgment tonight. I
can't take her judgment at all. Once, we used to be good friends before
everything. When I was happy and I didn't have the constant reminder of my
pathetic life scarred on my arm. Before she took sides and believed a lie. Like
I needed her around to remind me how blind I had been.

They walked
towards the door away from us and to my relief, didn't look our way. Close
call.

I needed some
serious cheering up then, so I downed the rest of my
fluro
orange cocktail and dragged Dee to the bar for something else. I either needed
to get drunk to forget or find something else to dwell on. Starting with an
electric blue Fruit Tingle sounded like a good idea to me, so I shouted Dee
one, much to his horror. Girly drinks are not hard enough for him and two in
one night is stretching his friendship.

I let my eyes
scan the bar, which has emptied out since the night was getting on. I'd never
admit it to Dee or even myself, but I just wanted to look at a handsome guy. If
he smiled at me, then I would feel less like the mutant I was. That was the aim
anyway. Seeing that echo of a much happier past had shaken me up.

The thing is
when you're single you can’t help but look twice at any decent looking guy
anyway. Nice hair, nice eyes, crap shoes. The shoes are always a deal breaker.
Beat up white runners turn me off. Much the same way that skivvies and
scrunchies
were never fashionable. So, when I saw this guy
leaning against the far wall, I looked at his shoes first. He's wearing those
tailored combat boots with the laces all undone, scuffed to hell. Sexy as. One
hundred bonus points already. So naturally, I looked up to see what the rest
was like.

To my
surprise, it was the guy I'd seen before at the station.
The
bass player in that band, The Stabs.
I don't
recognise
the people he's with, but right now they don't exist to me. I have time to look
at him without anyone but Dee noticing. He has a
faded Strokes t-shirt on and tight grey jeans, tattoos on one arm and
the wildest curly hair I’d ever seen on a guy. And I knew some unkempt guys.
All short at the back and sides and that shock of blonde curls falling into his
eyes. I wanted to brush it away to see what
colour
they were.