Strange Times: The Tattoo
This was the fourth "Strange Times" story from Strange Worlds. It was improvised on March 30th, 2013.
Episode Summary
Exhausted and dazed, Detective Morgan McNulty and Nate Jester drink at a local bar. Jester asks McNulty why they investigate these things, and why she’s a detective. She evasively responds that her father was a cop, but does not elaborate. Jester becomes quite taken with the waitress, her arms adorned with tattoos of leaping cats, vines, and feathered snakes. McNulty begins to talk about her father, but Jester is too distracted by the waitress and her tattoos, explaining there’s something familiar about them (though McNulty thinks he’s just checking her out). They ask her back over and Jester asks her if she’s ever been to South America. McNulty recognizes the design as similar to those in a case that crossed her desk the previous week, involving a temple in the Andes. She asks the waitress if she’s met a woman named Lily Wilde, which the waitress admits she has but refuses to answer any more questions except that she had the tattoos done locally. Jester opens his shirt to reveal a tattoo on his chest of a skull with a jungle cat leaping over it. They realize that their tattoos when held up to each other form a cat inside a giant heart. McNulty says they have to go to the Andes to investigate, and Jester agrees...they’ll go to The Andes!
A South American tattoo artist etches a boa constrictor around a client’s arm, telling him it will give him strength. Jester brings McNulty in, and she realizes he meant a local tattoo shop called The Andes run by Loka, an old friend of Jester’s from his days as a correspondent in the Great War (whom he jokingly calls “Andy”). They ask him about the tattoos that have been popping up and the incident at the temple, and Loka realizes that Jester has met the girl with the tattoos on her arm, declaring her to be Jester’s wife! He has McNulty start a fire and explains that after their many talks about Jester’s desire for true love, he prayed for his friend and the gods sent him a vision of a young woman, the woman from the bar. He sought her out and marked her with the companion piece to the tattoo he had given Jester. A jealous McNulty blurts out that she’s always wanted a tattoo, and Loka begins his ritual, telling her that each tattoo he gives tells some piece of the future. Jester comforts his nervous partner as a vision of a volcano appears in the fire, and Loka begins to tattoo it on McNulty’s arm. He says that the volcano is a sign of fertility. McNulty responds that she’s not going to have any kids, and Loka tells her she can’t. She will have a choice to make, to let the volcano lie dormant and never have children or awaken it and have a child who will bring her much joy, but bring the world much pain. As the tattoo is finished, the fire flares bright one last time, and then dies...
