Insomnia ... I can’t get no sleep ...

Can he who is haunted by his actions pass on such a haunting with one single final action?

Total darkness, eyes open, disturbed by an unending plop ... plop ... plop ... all there is, and it is all around, an eternal mind-numbing drip that must be stopped, it needs to be stopped. Fully awake in a conscious slumber, that drip must be found and ended. In truth the drip is internal, the sound of guilt catching up, the sound of the blood of the dead dripping in much the same manner the tell-tale heartbeats, hideously implicating the murderer of a senseless crime by attacking his conscience.

It has not senseless though, has it? No, a service has been provided on multiple occasions, on multiple levels. How many hearts have been saved due to his service? How many hearts have been saved from having to tell a tale? If all this really is a service, then why is he adding to his own implication? Why is he setting himself up to pay for crimes committed if they are not crimes at all?

This is not what he is doing. He is not looking for a punishment to come his way. The markings, the tattoos are no different than notches on a belt. They represent each passing, an acknowledgment in some way recording each achievement or event. This is it, yes surely it is.

The dripping, however, is more prevalent now than it has ever been before. Thirty-three years have seen many achievements come and each grouping of achievements are marked, tagged, recorded on skin to be worn as a badge, often a hidden badge, until either death comes, or someone figures out their meaning, one or the other, or possibly both.

Yeah, the dripping, it is keeping him awake, now more than ever before. So perhaps there is some guilt, some regret. Maybe there is the thought, the question, as to why it has been left to him to do what must be done, what had needed to have been done. This sin is not one to be committed and those who do so will be punished by death. He had been sinned against, multiple times and not the other way round.

His first love, a girl named Tanya McNamara, she, along with her consort have already paid the ultimate price at his own hands. This should have been a once-off, a one- and only-time thing, but it wasn’t. What would come became an obsession, it became a duty, it became work though is it God’s work or Satan’s? Who decides such? And who decides the punishment for he who performs such work?

Thirty-three years have now passed and it can continue no longer … sleep must come … one way or another.

It is the dreams that prevent sleep. They are stronger, darker, more worrisome now than what they have ever been before. In the end, it may not be God, the Devil, or man who takes him, maybe no judge will punish him; perhaps the dreams and lack of sleep are doing all that as it is.

He sees Tanya’s head repeatedly bashed against a stone wall and the same occurring of her lover. No matter the amount of time which has passed since. He sees his younger self work, burying the first two souls he has taken, as if he were watching while having an out of body experience. Indeed, he never expected a recurrence of these events though taking two lives was only a beginning.

For Derek Hanson, this is the beginning of the end, whatever force has been guiding him for two-thirds of his life may soon be looking for to call him home though no matter how strong that force is, reason will come for him to doubt all that he has done and that will be cause enough to end it all.

His most recent divine act of darkness has been complete, and for the first time in his life it all has begun to come back to him, hauntingly, and the worst has yet to come. He has killed yet again, taken the life of the one he loved. Another betrayal along with the accomplish no matter the level of knowledge of betrayal he might have.

Like so many times before when a mission comes complete, Derek seeks out a tattoo artist on-line, makes an appointment so he can have the name of the most recent of towns he has performed his duty in tattooed onto the back of one of his calves. This most recent tattoo, unbeknown to Derek himself, will be the last he will acquire making his collection of town names complete at ten, five on each calf.

Derek likes to keep to himself and in making his tattoo appointment he makes a point that he wants no questions to be asked of him. He only wants to turn up, get the tattoo done, pay the agreed price and then leave, such a thing may happen this time round but so too will a number of other things.

Lying down on his front so the tattoo artist can get to work, only one calf is revealed and that is the right calf. The names of four towns are already tattooed here, one directly under the next, all town names with which the tattooist does not recognize, however the town name he is to add is one with which he does recognize.

The tattooist cannot help but wonder as to why his new client is collecting these names in such a manner, as per agreement no questions are asked, and here is where things are really about to go beyond strange for both client and tattooist.

Only minutes into the session something catches Derek Hanson’s eye. There is a lady, a teenage girl in the room not all so far up and ahead of him. He looks and instantly recognizes her. And he should recognize her for he has taken her life but how can she be here?

‘Tanya?’ he asks, almost reaching out for the girl.

Tanya McNamara, Derek’s first love, was only sixteen years of age when he took her life. In this moment she still looks to be just sixteen years of age. How can she be here? How can she still be sixteen? When the tattooist looks towards where his client is reaching, he can see no one, let alone any girl who could be named Tanya. It has begun, the beating of the tell-tale heart.

Job is soon completed. A fee is handed over and indeed Derek leaves with no questions having been asked of him, just as he had requested. This most recent tattooist, however, is not happy to just let things be.

A lot of his business originates on-line, so this is where the tattooist soon goes. He googles the town name he had recognized and adds the names of the four other towns he noticed already tattooed onto a leg he had been working on. Nothing of note stands out, nothing that is until he adds the name Tanya to the search, the name he heard spoken in such an odd manner.

Initially, nothing presents itself but with a little joining of the dots, something indeed does present itself. There are deaths of apparent couples, all with their heads bashed in, noted from each of the towns listed. All began as cases of missing people, believed to have vacated their locations because of newfound love, believed until their bodies were discovered …

There is no Tanya listed from any of these five towns though there is a reported death of a missing person, a sixteen-year-old girl who possibly ran away with a new love.

It is reported that running away is so unlike this girl named Tanya. Foul play may have been assumed though nothing has been proven. Tanya and her missing person boyfriend, they are the youngest of all the cases the tattoo artist believes are relevant. Each couple has progressively gotten older. Putting two and two together, one can only assume that he who came in to be tattooed has something to do with these murders.

Think no more of it, he decides. Whatever has occurred is not his business. It may involve people who he has never known, it may stretch over a period of decades, but nothing directly relates to him. All he did was his own job and that was to ink a tattoo. Yeah, it does not involve him until it does.

Maybe it was the job itself, maybe there is no one else to attach to, maybe he has been and will be in the wrong place at the wrong time, the reasoning may never be known. A ghost came to compel her killer to admit his crime. If he soon ceases to be then perhaps someone else will listen to her. A late evening shop does it.

The tattooist has come to a supermarket to buy beer and rubbish to consume alone, in his own time, at his own home premises. However, in this supermarket there so happens to be a person he somewhat recognizes. In this supermarket the tattooist spies that former client of his. It would appear a number of things are being purchased by that former client of his, one item of which appears to be sturdy looking rope.

Backing off, hiding his presence, the tattooist observes. Intrigued by all he knows, the tattooist follows he who had come to him, he follows to a rented premises. With it being so late in the day it is dark so, following another is made all the easier. Soon he sees what he could not have predicted. That rope, surely it had not been intended for this, though obviously, it might be if the truth of a past could be known for sure.

Through thin curtains the tattooist can see a hanging, he observes a man taking his own life. Surely, he, an observer, is here for a reason. Maybe all he knows, all he has found out, has led him right here, right now. He attempts to get in and eventually he does, though it is far too late. There is nothing he can do. If there really is nothing that he can do then why has he been led here?

Perhaps there has been an attachment and now a transference. The tattooist now cannot sleep; like a murderer had been unable to sleep; for he now sees it all as it happened. He sees it, he hears it, he feels it. Why did he have to be so curious? It had nothing to do with him and now it has everything to do with him.

Derek Hanson is dead. Ghosts, the spirits of all those he killed, all those he murdered now keep a tattooist up at night, including a sixteen-year-old girl named Tanya. So many souls, lost and in pain. Tell-tale hearts wanting a truth to come out, even their own parts in what occurred. The drip, drip, drip of blood has found a way to continue on...

A new insomniac will have trouble in finding sleep.