Sweet Sick Teen 9

 “I just don’t understand how I didn’t notice them until just now.”

“It’s not unusual.  Sometimes we’re too close to our problems to comprehend them.  We need an outside view to help give a second opinion.  Speaking of which...”  The Tattooed Man turned towards the Girl.  “There’s something I hope you can help me out with.”

“What can I do that a crowd of people couldn’t?”

“That’s easy!  It’s...”  Then his confidence faded away on his face.  “I know what it is.  Its for something important.  It was on the tip of my tongue,” he said, knocking a fist against his forehead, “but it’s gone now.”

“Does it have anything to do with what’s written all over you?”

He looked down at himself.  “That’s right!  I wrote reminders all over me just in case I forgot.  Could you help?  Two minds are better than one.”

She stared at the markings on the man’s body.  But it was more difficult for her than suspected.  As soon as she started reading a line, her thoughts would unravel, and she’d forget the chain of words they were supposed to mean.  She grimaced in frustration.  “I’m sorry, I...”

“Don’t be.  How about I read a few, and you remember those later?”

Her face brightened up at having to delegate responsibility.  “That sounds much better!”

“Go look in your bag, and see if there’s anything you can write with.”

“What bag?” she asked, looking around, and being surprised to find one hanging from her shoulders.  She opened it, and was confused at the first thing she saw.

“What is it?”

“There’s a bunch of papers with the same thing written on all of them...”

“Dump them.  They can’t be that important.  You only need one.”

Inwardly, she doubted these words, but couldn’t think of a good counterargument.  Still, she didn’t feel quite right somehow, and stashed a few papers around, just in case she might need them later.  There were so many of them anyways.

“Okay, so here’s how’s it gonna work.  I’ll read what’s on my arm.  Then you write it down...”

“How do we make sure that we don’t wind up reading the same lines twice?”

“Good question.”  The Tattooed Man looked down at himself.  “I’m really dirty.  Do you have anything I can wipe myself off with?”

She looked inside her bag for some towels, which for some reason, had more pieces of papers inside them.  Her sleeve got caught on one of the hooks inside, revealing the hidden message inscribed on her.  These too were cast aside.

“You don’t need those.  This is more important,” the Tattooed Man said, wiping himself off and once he was done, did the same to her body.

“Stop that!!  I need those!  I must’ve had a reason to have so many!”

But the Tattooed Man paid no attention to her meek protests.  “You don’t want to be like the majority of the people wandering out there.”  He pointed out to a lone figure wandering off in the distance.

“Over there is a woman who has a shopping list as long as her arm inscribed all over her arm.  On her other arm is a reminder not to pick up said items, since she already has enough of them at home.  But since she can’t be absolutely certain that she’s not running low, she always winds up buying a few extra... if she could ever find a store in the first place, let alone where she lived.”

She’d been struggling wildly as she unsuccessfully tried to fight him off, but had grown docile as she grew engrossed in the story she’d just heard.  She stared incredulously at the Tattooed Man.  “You don’t remember where your clothes are, 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 so many notes cluttering up your life.”

With great reluctance, she dumped the excess notes confusing her already complicated yet simple life.  No matter.  She still had a few more hiding places for her notes that hadn’t been found yet.

When the Tattooed Man was finally presentable, they started their correspondence.  He would read one line on his body then repeated it to the Girl, who would hastily transcribe the words over the back of her pages.  Once he was satisfied with what was written, he would then cross out the relevant portion over his body with dirt.

It was slow painstaking work, trying to retain fragmented bits of information that wouldn’t stay still.  But the visual textual assault on his skin was deceptive.  Despite the amount of intimidating verbal diarrhea, there were a lot of repeated lines.  Essentially, they could be paired off and matched together, then distilled to their basest components which consisted of:

• Don’t Trust Anyone.
• Pay Attention to Clues.
• Condense, Condense, Condense.
• Someone is Responsible.
• She’s Dead.
• You were Married Once.
• Take in Everything at Once.
• Remember, this is Very Important.
• Brush your Teeth.

Taken apart, they meant very little.  But put together, they made a certain amount of sense.  There was one particular note that stood out among all the rest:

• GET HELP.