The Girl was annoyed with the work at first, but found that as long as she kept her mind occupied, she could ignore the smell. It was better to empty her head of such thoughts. But now that the amount of tattooed text was running low, her mind started to wander again.
“I’m impressed. How can you read so much without losing track?” This was actually the fifth time she’d asked that question, but the Tattooed man didn’t mind telling her again.
“The trick is not to get bogged down with every individual word, but to absorb the sentence as a whole. When there’s too many details, your mind gets overwhelmed and shuts down. But if you can focus on just a few facts, that simplifies matters a lot.”
“But you’ve got SO MUCH written all over you. How can you tell what’s important or not??”
“I try not to think about things like that.”
The text portion of the Tattooed Man were easily dealt with, but there were still the mysterious symbols to contend with, which neither of them understood. His back, which was elaborately done, had countless symbols that were utterly baffling. It was just as well - the Tattooed Man refused to have any notes transcribed that he couldn’t verify himself.
The one thing the Girl could understand was twin markings of footprints placed upside-down on his butt. The only other similar body part were two handprints on his arms and shoulders. For some reason, there were a lot of images of babies poised in fetal positions. The Girl didn’t know why, but these images made her uncomfortable.
“What’s with all the elaborate tattoos, anyways? Is there some significant meaning to them?”
“You think this is a lot? This is nothing compared to another Lost Soul out there. Take this guy over there,” he said pointing to a mysterious figure that registered on his radar. It was a man compulsively flipping through the pages of a huge book, and wearing what looked like a laughing & crying theatre mask.
“That’s one of the saddest cases here. He’s got November 5th written on his forearms, but he can’t for the life of him, Remember the significance of this date. Was it an important anniversary?? An appointment?? All he can recall is the incomplete phrase, “The something, something and something.”
“The...?”
“Sorry. The Blank, Blank and Blank,” he said, simplifying the previous statement. “He carries a Dictionary around him, trying in vain to find the correct combination that would surely unlock his potential. Finding one word would be hard enough, two in sequence, even trickier. But three in a row?? Good luck finding that combination in a massive tome filled with obscure words that don’t exist outside of human speech. He’s got dozens of bookmarks for words that sound vaguely familiar, but has yet to come across the correct connections.”
Far off in the distance, the Masked Man was muttering, “The Aardvark, Behavior and Clot? No. The Abhorrent, Bystander and Cat? No. The Acer, Butcher, and Candle? No...”
“There are times when he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He could laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all if he didn’t feel so depressed. He must be an actor, otherwise, he wouldn’t be wearing a laughing and crying mask wherever he goes.”
“You don’t remember what you wrote, but you remember THAT??”
“I must’ve heard about it before I was dumped here... wherever “here” is. The point is, you don’t need to overburden yourself with extraneous details. Just focus on what’s truly important in the moment.” He looked at the list of notes written down for him.
Unbeknownst to the Girl, there was a particular rule that the Tattooed Man was keeping away from her, and only showed her once:
- Avoid the City at All Costs.
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