The Girl With The Neck Tattoo
She messages me on POF, from a profile with no picture, and tells me that we are already friends on fb. Then she makes fun of my hair. That's all. Her profile, Jezebelz010101010, is down the next day. A few days later I find myself scrolling through my well-manicured fb friends list, trying to determine who she might be, and if Jezebelz is even a "She" at all. I'm really thinking I'm getting trolled by the guys at work, but it turns out Jezebelz' fb profile pic is some geek I went to high school with--Dennis Hoff. Her ex-boyfriend from several years back, she tells me in a Direct Message that I find in my inbox. He graduated when I was a freshman. I never really knew him. Apparently, I accepted a friend request at some point.
"I used the profile to bust his balls. He's not on social media," she writes. "Once his friends started adding me, I invited everyone that fb suggested. Anyone that he ever went to school with, or worked with."
"It's creepy," I offer back. "I thought I was being messed with."
"I know. I'm sorry," she replies immediately. "I don't have an account of my own. I'm not really into social media. I don't like being in the public eye. All I have is this fake one I created years ago."
That catches my attention. After all my recent relationships, I learned that social media is killing my love life. Between the incessant phone scrolling, selfie posting, and DM conversations, I can't find a woman worth keeping. So now I become worried that I'm being stalked by someone who's probably got something wrong with her, and/or could be a man, but at the same time I'm wondering if this is an amazing opportunity to meet someone different. Someone Quality. So I ask for a pic, and she agrees to inbox me one.
She's a knockout. Young 20s. Blonde Hair dyed purple--you could see the blonde growing back at the roots. Piercings. Ink all over. Especially this red choker tattoo on her neck that I thought was jewelry at first. The photo is weird. It's like a camera pic of a printed photo, and it seems kind of old.
"It's not that old," she tells me, "but yeah--it's not new."
"That's suspect," I tell her. "You see all my photos. You see which ones are from last month. You see where I work, and all of that. I don't even know your name."
"It's Jessica. I'll send another," she promises. Same thing. Beautiful pic of her in a skirt and sweater on an Autumn Day. She's sitting on an old wooden swing hung from a tree. It looks professionally done. "This one's newer," she writes. "It's still a pic of a pic, though."
"How long ago is this?"
"I don't now. 6 years ago. Maybe 7." I sigh heavily, because I'm pretty sure I'm being cat-fished, but the woman in these photos is outrageously beautiful. Much too good-looking for Dennis Hoff, which simultaneously gives me pause, yet also a real morale boost that maybe I can actually woo her. She is the one approaching me, after all. I'm entirely torn between wanting to meet her and believing that I'm being manipulated, when Jessica asks if I'll pick her up from work in an hour. "We can get a coffee and talk," she writes. I ask for her number and she tells me no. "I work at the bakery in the old mill on Cottage. Just meet me there." I agree.
The place seems empty. I mean I know it's still in use, but you hardly ever see anyone at the old mill anymore. I thought the bakery had closed and it was just a Farmer's Market on the weekends, but Jessica comes walking out the enormous old double doors dressed exactly like she was in the photo. Plaid skirt and black leggings. Vintage Sweater. She looks like a Punk Rock Star from the 90s with her purple and blonde hair, and those gloves without the fingers. Her nails are painted black, and she's wearing a solid black choker collar around her neck that's hiding her tattoo. She gets right in the car, and she's cheerful. "Let's go!" she says. "I want to get the fuck out of here!"
I'm immediately infatuated. She's not like anyone I've ever met. She thinks different. She talks different. She rejects technology, as much as anyone can these days. Barely uses a phone. Tells me wifi is more than she needs, if she needs it at all. The way she looks at the world reminds me of who I was back when I liked who I was. When my whole life was ahead of me. Not like the person I am now. Lame. Boring. In a rut. All of a sudden I'm inspired to do things. To live life. Coffee goes on for hours. Turns into dinner and drinks, where we hash out a plan for an adventure. We talk about taking off to the mountains for a weekend. We'll hike through nature and jump waterfalls. We'll camp in the wilderness and go on a vision quest. "I'm broke," she says. "But I don't care about money. I should, but I just don't. I just want to live." I joke that she's too pretty to need to worry about money. "Sad, but true, maybe. Men always try to buy you. Truth is, I got used to not having to care about money. Dennis took care of everything."
"How is Dennis? I didn't really..."
"He's dead," she says abruptly. "Car crash. We were supposed to be married."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know. When?"
"Four years ago. Just about. I don't want to talk about it." Our bartender picks up on the silence, and when he comes over Jessica orders another round of drinks. "Whiskey, neat. Both of us." We get drunk. Too drunk for me to drive by the time the place closes, and even though she knows that, she refuses to let me call an Uber. "I'm rejecting technology, but I'm saying yes to you." I grab hold of her and kiss her. She leans into me, and I trace my fingers along her neck to the choker collar, hiding the tattoo, but she stops me. "No, you have to leave that on." We make love in my car in the empty parking lot, and afterward, we fall asleep tangled up in each other.
A patrolman wakes me up in the early morning with the woop of a siren. I immediately realize that I'm naked and start getting my pants on, but before I can get completely dressed, the officer is at the car door with his flashlight out. He orders me out of the vehicle, and I'm shoeless. Jessica is gone, and so are all her clothes.
“It's good you didn't drive, but you can't have been parked here all night. I've got to give you a ticket. Why were you naked?”
“Excuse me. What do you mean ticket?”
“I mean ticket. Either for illegally parking, or drunken indecency. Up to you. Get the rest of your clothes on. Were you here alone?”
“Uh, yeah, eerrr..No. I was here with a woman. I guess she left.”
“Alright. Here's the deal. $50 ticket for illegally parking overnight in this lot. You can pay it at the department in person or by mail. Please exit the premises. Have a good day.” The cop follows me out of the parking lot and a mile down the road before he gets off my tail.
I make it home wondering where Jessica went and immediately send her a message on fb. “Hey, hope you made it home alright. Talk to you later.” I don't get a reply, so after a few hours later at work I send another message. “Had fun. So Tired. See you tonight?.” Six hours later—no response. And nothing the following day, either. The whole weekend goes by without a word, and then three more days. I finally send, “Hey, want to meet up?” Wednesday afternoon. No reply.
I get anxious on Thursday, and I wait for her to get out of work at the Old Mill on Cottage Street at the same time that she got out last Thursday, but no one exits the building. After a while I walk up to the great big double doors and read a sign that says: “Closed M-F. Open Saturdays & Sundays 9-2 for the Farmers Market.” It's dated 2 years ago. I try to open the door, but it's locked.
Confused, I get in my car and decide to pay my parking ticket. When I arrive, I ask the police clerk, “Hey, any idea how long the bakery in the old mill on Cottage St. has been closed?”
While he's processing my ticket, and swiping my debit card, he tells me, “Oh, about 3 years ago their oven caught fire. Lost their license with the Department of Health after that. The place just does the Farmers Market on the weekends now.”
I nod. “Thought so.” I'm convinced now that Jessica lied to me about working there and I'm confused about why. Feeling stupid about being manipulated, I tell the clerk, “The reason I ask is that I had a friend that worked there, and I was just wondering what happened to her. It was a while ago. She was supposed to get married to another old friend of mine, Dennis Hoff, but I heard he died. We went to high school together.”
“Dennis Hoff did die. I knew him. So you were a friend of his?”
“Not really. We went to high school together. Actually I was better friends with his girl friend. A girl named Jessica.”
“Jessica Brennan. Gorgeous girl. So sad.”
“Excuse me.”
“I'm very sorry. Jessica and Dennis died together in a car crash just before their wedding. No one knows what exactly happened, but they drove off the road in Dennis' pickup near Mt. Wilkins. Fell all the way down into the ravine.”
“That's terrible,” I say, “but it couldn't have been her.”
“Purple hair? Tattoo on her neck?” I nod. “That's Jessica. Their friends think they were having relationship problems, and that she was going to call of the wedding. That poor girl. Her family wouldn't let us rule it a Murder-Suicide, but that's what we thought it was. They couldn't believe that Dennis would do that to her. We didn't have enough evidence either way. Case Closed.”
“It sounds horrible, but it couldn't be the same Jessica.”
The clerk lets out this heavy sigh and takes out his phone. “Like I said, I knew Dennis. Here they are at one of my cookouts. Man, she was pretty.” There she is on the cop's phone, dressed in her plaid skirt and vintage sweater. The red neck tattoo is showing. “This was Labor Day 6 years ago,” the cop says. “If you want to visit her, we buried what we found of her at the cemetery on Cottage, next to the old mill.”
“What you found of her?”
“I'm very sorry, young man. Jessica's neck was severed in the wreck. We never found her head.”