My sleeves had always been a point of pride for me… until now.

Now it was all I could do to keep my head still and my eyes closed. No one around me could see it, so no one understood. believed me when I tired to explain what was happening.

Personally the movement I could have learned to live with, had it stayed a visual oddity.

I had spent thousands and countless hours selecting just the right patterns, colors. Finding the right artiest. The needle work had been agonizing.

Everything was normal on completion…. until it wasn't.

I look once more on my arms. My inked snakes normal place on my left wrist, was currently being taken up by the sailor from my right. They were all line art now, the ones I could see. All the color was now border-less, making a rainbow mist of my arms. The tattoos I could not see directly, I could feel them moving in the mists, see little parts of their lines emerging here and there as they made their way across my flesh, inside my flesh.

It had started with movement across my skins surface. They did not start crawling inside my arms, until after I tried to get them removed. I fear they will go deeper and beyond my limbs, If I continue with slow weekly laser sweeps to wash them away.

With renewed resolve, I close my eyes once more and lower both my arms into the deep fryer.