Mindy Poppago: Blue: Part 1: The Spectacularious Night Read online

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  The Spectacularious Night

  Part 1 of BLUE, Book 1 of the Mindy Poppago Series

  By

  A.J. Hallenger

  Prime Meridian Press

  primemeridianpress.com

  Copyright© 2017 by the author (mailto:[email protected])

  Prime Meridian Press

  (mailto:[email protected])

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in any form, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author or publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Furthermore, any and all errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling are entirely the fault of the author. Kindly report such mistakes (that are not in character) to the author at [email protected] for correction.

  *****

  This book is intended for mature audiences only.

  Contents

  Episode 1 – Loneliness Wears A Mermaid Tattoo

  Episode 2 - Night Ride High-Jinx

  Episode 3 - Dr. Fantasy & The Nurse Of Hearts

  Episode 4 – Physical Examinations

  For PJ

  “The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

  - Maya Angelou

  Episode 1 – Loneliness Wears A Mermaid Tattoo

  “I want a big ol’ honkin’ pussy on my chest,” he growled to Fran, who was stationed behind the front counter. He was thumping his left pec and obviously drunk stupid. Fran looked in my direction for some combat support. Another Friday night at Diana’s Boulevard Tattoo Parlor—as they say, you never know what’s going to tumble through the door.

  I’m a tattoo artist. It’s a turn-on, and it’s easy money in the bank. It can’t get much better than that. I guess it sounds like I’m some kind of kinky whore-freak when I put it that way, but that’s just how it is.

  It wasn’t even nine o’clock. All of the artists were with clients except for my boss Jerry and me, and he took the companion that came in with the loud guy, so I got the one demanding a vagina. He looked a little ruffled around the edges, but he did have a nice bod and looks—tall, dark, and muscular. He had that military muff-top haircut, green eyes, and a squared-off chin like a movie star hunk. I’m five-six, and he had to be close to a foot taller than me.

  “So, why the hell do you want a pussy on your chest?” I asked, trying not to sound too incredulous.

  “So I can be sure it fuckin’ belongs to me,” he said sharply, giving me a glare.

  “Yeah?” I commented. “For the rest of your life? Your kids and grandkids will be so proud.”

  “That’s fuckin’-A right! I said I want a nice big pussy on my chest, right here,” he insisted, slapping his upper chest. “I don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m payin’ for it. How much is it? Can’t you draw a pussy? Hell, you’re dressed like a slut. Just tattoo me a picture of yours.”

  “Wow, thanks for the compliment, pal,” I said, turning and walking to my workstation chair while giving him the finger.

  Okay, I’ll admit I was dressed a bit tacky, but that’s how I had been feeling lately. Actually, I like to look a little floozy most of the time. Why not? I got good looks, nice 34C tits, tight, shapely legs, a firm, curved booty, and I look badass with my tats, piercings, blue eyes and whatever my hair color is at any given time. Not bad for a vagabond orphan girl. Tonight I was wearing a short red denim skirt that made my colorfully inked legs look longer, along with my off-white, virtually see-through cotton blouse that had most of the buttons buttoned down the front and stopped where my skirt’s waistband started. I was showing so much skin I felt like a fucking kaleidoscope. I also had on my pink Converse just because it was Friday. Oh, and my hair for the late summer season was metallic blue and shiny, like a pimped-up new Corvette.

  But, a slut? Really? Maybe I was tilting a little heavy on the skanky side for wearing my blue thong under my short skirt, but I wasn’t going to show that to just anyone.

  I stood next to my chair and faced him with my arms crossed. “Look, I’m not putting my or anybody else’s pussy on your chest any how or any way, big guy,” I said firmly.

  “Aw, just fuckin’ with ya. I’ve been drinkin’.” He eased up on the take no prisoners approach. “C’mon, baby, any pussy. A nice one. Can’t you do a pussy?”

  Me, do a pussy? You have no idea! I chuckled to myself.

  “Sure, but why not be different?” I challenged dryly. “Dudes regret getting a pussy on their chest—sometimes the one and only gets old after a while.”

  He paused to comprehend what I’d just said, then let out a light, “Huh.” All this pussy talk was making me feel a tingle in mine. I watched and waited while he seemed to be taking longer to crawl out of his thoughts than a normal body should. As he did, he started focusing on the samples of some of my work on the wall. I let him wander. My subject specialty is in maritime themes—the ocean and its mythological figures.

  “Hey, some of this is fuckin’ cool,” he said in a friendlier tone. “You did all this? How long have you been doin’ it? Can’t be that long. How old are you?” he questioned absently.

  “Twenty-five,” I said. “I started when I was seventeen.”

  He showed no sign of hearing me. “I kinda like that mermaid there,” he said, pointing his finger at one of my favorites. “Damn, she’s hot. She’s fuckin’ stacked.”

  “Yeah, I kind of like that one too. See, that’s what you need—a sexy mermaid. You know, with a serpent entwined and slithering down her wet, naked body.” I tried my seductive voice to embellish the wet, naked body part to hard sell it. He still looked puzzled.

  “I don’t know. A mermaid doesn’t even have a cunt, does she? Do they fuck?”

  Now it was really getting ridiculous. “Oh, yeah, they fuck. They really fuck. They fuck all the fuckin’ time. They’re fuckin’ magical fuckers—”

  “Okay, okay, I got it. They fuck good.”

  “They’re awesome fuckers. What’s your name?”

  “Dale,” he said, slightly dazed. “Tell you what, muffin, draw that fuckin’ old guy with a beard stabbin’ a mermaid with that pitchfork thing he’s holdin’. Fuck! Show some pain. Lots of pain. And he should look angry just like he does there. And I don’t fuckin’ want no color—just black.”

  I was mortified. Stabbing a mermaid? That’s like stabbing a pin-up or, more than that, a goddess! When I was a kid, I had a dream that my mother was a mermaid, and I’ve been fascinated with them ever since. How could I even think of killing one?

  Shit, maybe we should go back to the vagina, I half-whimsically thought.

  I tried again to guide this perverted soul to a semblance of reason and decency. “That’s pretty fuckin’ violent. You sure you’re not just in a bad mood? Maybe you should think it over when you haven’t had so much to drink. Come back tomorrow—”

  “Hell, bitch—” he interrupted, but stopped himself. “Kiddin’. What’s your name again?”

  “I haven’t said. Mindy.”

  “Shit, Mindy, I want a tattoo tonight!” His face grimaced, and he began to get seriously emotional. “I got to go back to Afghanistan tomorrow. It’s fucked up, but I gotta go. It’s all fucked up. My marriage is fucked up. My family’s fuck
ed up. I’m fucked up. And I want a fucked up tattoo so I can always remember how fucked up it all was. Is. Whatever. Know what I’m sayin’, Mindy?”

  He may have been cruising on tipsy, but his air pressure was leaking fast. And he hit a soft spot that I wasn’t expecting.

  “Are you really fuckin’ sure?” My mind was kicking in gear, and without even trying I already saw images in my head that I would normally filter out for the sake of the sacred. “I could make it look really freakin’ dope if you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  “I want it. Yeah, make it sick! I want that fuckin’ bearded angry fucker stabbin’ the shit out of a fuckin’ mermaid! Do it! Just do it like that!” He pointed at my wall again. “You can really fuckin’ draw—I can tell you’re a fuckin’-A tattoo bitch!”

  I AM a fuckin’-A tattoo bitch!

  “Alright. You win, soldier. Sit over here.”

  “I ain’t a fuckin’ soldier—I’m a Marine!” he sternly corrected.

  “Whoops, sorry. Marine. Fuck—damn, you sure say fuck a lot,” I commented candidly.

  “Fuckin’-A,” he retorted.

  A thought occurred to me. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about I put this on your upper arm? Don’t you think you’d turn off chicks that have to look at a tat of a lady getting bludgeoned on your chest when you’re making love? Think about it.”

  He paused a couple of seconds. “Yeah, yeah, you’re probably right. That wouldn’t be cool. My fuckin’ arm then. But I don’t know what chicks…” he trailed off.

  “It’s a lot better than a pussy. I promise,” I said as I guided him to the chair. I had him take off his t-shirt to get a clear shot of his upper arm. His large, muscle-toned chest looked as hard as a rock and could probably ricochet bullets. The tingling in my pussy started up again, but my better judgment told me to ignore it; it wouldn’t be worth the drama. I saw that he already had a few tattoos, mostly of the traditional, military type, including a large USMC eagle centered on his back.

  He flopped down in the chair. I knew I could ink the mermaid out in about three hours, but first I was going to have to put the guy at ease. I couldn’t have him irritable and moving around on me while I was trying to ink. That would cause the operation to take all night.

  “Since you’ve got all those other tats, I don’t have to tell you that this is going to stick like hell,” I warned, as I always do.

  “Hey, believe me, I’ve been through fuckin’ worse, baby. Don’t worry about it,” he assured me.

  “Okay,” I acknowledged, “then we’re good to go. If you have to, just think of it as getting an idea of what it feels like for the mermaid to be fuckin’ stabbed over and over and over again.”

  “Good idea,” he said, with a light chuckle and no sign of sympathy at all. “Stab away. Wait… No, make it the color of your hair. Shit, that’ll be a nice memory. I don’t see many fuckin’ blue-haired babes.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll need to make it a really dark blue, though, so it doesn’t fade too much over the years.”

  “Whatever you say, Sarge; you’re the chief on this fuckin’ tin can,” he declared.

  “Aye-aye, I eats me spinach,” I said in response. He gave me a quizzical look, and I stared back at him with a raised eyebrow and a mocking look of, Really?

  I was going to ink this tat freehand. The horrific image was blaring in my mind, and I just wanted to get it over with. I knew I was going to make myself sick if I wasn’t careful. Seriously.

  I proceeded to spend the next three-and-a-half hours inking the most grotesque and painfully nightmarish blue monochromatic murder scene that would make even the ancient Greeks, with all their gory mythology, shudder in their sandals. In a morbid way, I thought he desperately needed it. I found myself channeling William Blake and his visual depictions of religious misery and angst, putting as much pain and rage as I could in the faces of Poseidon and the mermaid. Maybe a violent scene like this would help him express some of the shit-feelings and visual horrors he must be carrying around in his head, more graphic than I could even imagine. As gruesome as it was, it seemed like it would be much better and safer to manifest his destructive impulses this way—in art. I hoped I was right. It seemed brilliant at the time, but, fuck, what do I know? I’m a bit of a wackadoo myself; at least, that’s what I hear.

  Anyway, I knew this was an important tattoo for the guy. That’s why I love doing the work I do. I wanted him to have something he could always think of as special, personal and cherished like I want all my tattoos to be—although, I wouldn’t expect him necessarily to use those words.

  “Marine, eh?” I said. “Are you from around here, or did they ship you in?”

  “Fuckin’ brought me here a couple of years ago. I was a goddamn army brat when I was a little kid, so I’m used to moving around. My father died when I was fuckin’ ten, so my ma and me settled in bumfuck Missouri where she was from. Then she fuckin’ died a couple of years later in a goddamn car wreck.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, the Marines are fuckin’ more like my family now—like where I come from. I have a motherfuckin’ wife and kids, or did have. Shit, I don’t know. I don’t like talkin’ about it. Fuck.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cuz… it’s fuckin’ killin’ me!”

  I could tell by his tone that he was going to a dark place in his head. I felt for the guy, though, as grizzly as his desperation was. Maybe it was one of those kindred spirit things.

  “Well, shit, if it makes you feel any better,” I said, “I have no fuckin’ idea who my parents are. I was a goddamn foster kid. I grew up in a lot of homes too.”

  “No shit? What was that like?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t terrible, but as soon as I started to get fuckin’ comfortable, it seemed like I’d have to leave and move somewhere else. I got bounced around like a fuckin’ tramp from family to family, belongings to belongings, school to school, caseworker to fuckin’ caseworker. Fuck, the only consistency I had was me, myself, and I and that’s it.”

  “Damn, that’s some tough shit. I hear ya. Were you ever happy? I mean, shit, when I had to move to my aunt and uncle’s house, he’d fuckin’ beat me all the time. I hated him. That’s why I joined the Corps in the first place. I fuckin’ had to get my ass out of there before I killed him—before he fuckin’ killed me.”

  I felt him tense up, and I wondered if I should continue on this thread. It didn’t seem like it would take much to set him off again. I tried to shift the focus back to me.

  “That’s fucked up. Was I happy? Nah, probably not really—most of the time anyway.”

  “Yeah? Why not?”

  “I guess cuz I was always learning how to fuckin’ fit in, so I learned the hard way how to measure people up. I never fuckin’ felt understood by anyone until I made a friend in my teenage years.”

  I suddenly saw that this was getting heavy for me too. I realized that maybe this wasn’t a good idea. I wasn’t used to talking about myself and always managed to deflect the subject to something else when asked. It felt different this time. Even though I was starting to feel anxious, I took the leap anyway for his sake, if nothing else—what the hell; I’ll never see him again. So, I continued where my mind wanted to go. “You fuckin’ hear people talk about their mommies and daddies, the closeness of holidays and family dinners and all that kinda shit, but it only strikes some, like, badly tuned chords inside of me. I just don’t get their excitement, and it fuckin’ pisses me off.” I had to put the machine down because I was afraid I was shaking too much.

  He was looking straight ahead as if he were lost in a fog. I wasn’t sure if he was really interested in listening to my too bad, so sad story, so I asked, “Am I making any sense?”

  “Fuckin’-A,” he said.

  My anxiety turned into a pleasant rush. I rarely ever brought up this part of my life to anyone. Now I found myself pouring this shit out—as if someone had turned on the spigot and I didn’t wan
t to stop the flow.

  And I noticed that I couldn’t help dishing out more shits, fucks and fuckin’s than usual like he did. It was catching. It felt good to throw around cuss words. It kinda made the telling not quite so hard to tell. I picked up my machine and went back to work.

  I continued with my saga, “It was like I grew up watching others build up their warm memories; but for me, they were just times I felt even more like a fuckin’ outsider, kind of like the fuckin’ family dog. Now when I think about it, the whole idea of back home seems like a goddamn crutch to me—something you have to goddamn depend on. I can stand on my own without it. I started working here, and I started making some decent fuckin’ money and gettin’ some fuckin’ control over my life.”

  He was still blankly staring straight ahead, and, again, I thought I might have lost him. But then he asked, “Did you fuckin’ ever get beat? Or abused?”

  I took a moment to think before I answered him, trying to be honest. “Nah. I mean, I was never really bad off or abused, or any of that shit… Well, one guy got a little friggin’ weird on me when I was just a little kid on his lap, and there was the time I fuckin’ got kicked out of a family when they caught me with their son and his shitty friends, givin’ them fuckin’ blowjobs—”

  “What?!” He suddenly let out a laugh and turned his face toward me. Fortunately, I didn’t have the needle inserted in his arm, or the mermaid would have had a penis. “You did what? A blowjob? On fuckin’ all of them? How many?”

  “Hey, settle down, goddammit, and quit movin’ before I really do stab you! It wasn’t like that. I was only about twelve or thirteen and didn’t know it was supposed to be such a bad, fuckin’ forbidden thing for us to do. Shit, they wanted to show me how to do it and showed me freakin’ videos and shit—as if they knew, those bastards. Now I know they didn’t know goddamn squat. I think the caseworker I had back then kind of understood what happened, cuz I didn’t get in any big trouble, other than I had to fuckin’ move again. In fact, she hooked me up with the family that’s the closest thing I’ve had to a real fuckin’ family. I was with them through most of my teens. Guess you could say I was happy there.”