“You know, son” His voice sputtered like the pop of an old car starting “I spent a day in hell once.” “What on earth are you talking about, old man?” It sounded harsher than I meant. “Oh, you scoff, but don't deny that stare, you've got your head buried in your hands and I see that on your arm, new tattoo, isn't it?” The age hadn't taken his sight, that was for sure, there was a section of skin on my left forearm that I'd tried to obscure with a band-aid, it clearly was not working. “What is it?” Ripping off the bandage I showed him, “It's a cross” “Looks to be upside down, worshipping the devil?” “It's for when the cops tell me to stick my hands up, they'll realize that I'm religious.” He laughed at my canned response; I felt a little proud. I'd spent the entire time that the needle was in my skin coming up with it. “Well then you're set I suppose, but nobody gets a tattoo like that without some meaning to it, hell, I used to be a prison guard, half of my inmates had a cross, they said it made them feel secure. 'Course that was before they tried to fight me and spat in my face.” “Maybe it was because you made fun of their tattoos.”

I felt like I was being too rough on the old man, after all, he was only being friendly. “Oh perhaps, but tell me, what's so dark about your cell, son?” “What makes you think my cell's dark? Maybe I got a window for good behavior.” “Nobody gets a tattoo like that and then doesn't either sober up and cry about it or go get drunk with their friends and laugh about it unless they did it to push something else out.” 

“You're pretty insightful, my therapist said that I have authority issues, and said it might be a good idea for me to go to church. It was like group therapy, as it were, and they asked me to share, I told them I was an atheist.” 

“You're a brave man, confessing to being a non-believer in a nest of believers.”

“I wasn't exactly confessing, just telling them what they wanted to hear.”

“What they wanted to hear?”
“They wanted to hear that I was a soul that needed saving, now they've heard it-once I said that, they all told me how wrong I was, and how much their god could help me.”

“I take it you're not convinced by their god.” 

“Oh, he's convincing, much like Zeus in a way, obey him or suffer forever.”

“You'd rather not obey?”

“I'm not really sure, I know I'd rather not suffer forever.”

“So why get the tattoo if you're not really a hardened nonbeliever?”

It was a hard question to answer, he'd caught me off-guard, I was hoping that the rest of the exchange would be filled with snarky, sarcastic comments between the two of us, I was enjoying it really, but then he put me on the spot.

“One saint was to be crucified, and he requested that he be hung upside down, so as not to die in the manner as his savior.”
“So?”

“So, the commitment to something, so much as to choose a much more painful death, I may not believe in the savior, but that's a sentiment that I can agree with.” 

“You're lying. I can tell. What, girlfriend leave you? God forsake you? Someone try to hang you from a cross?”

“That's an interesting concept, god-forsaken. Is that just a fancy term for your luck running out?”

“No, it's a fancy term for your time running out.” 

“Then yes, I'm certainly god-forsaken.”

“How so?”

I lifted my shirt, luckily the damned thing was red anyway, I showed the old man the wound in my stomach, it was only about a few inches wide, but it was deep, and the crude bandage I'd tied over it  was beginning to drip. “Someone put a knife through me.”

“So you went to get an upside down cross tattoo and talk to an old man in a city park instead of going to the hospital.”

“I think there are better places to spend your last hours than a hospital. Dying should be done in a more interesting way than being hooked to machines, I'd rather spend the day talking with you than talking with emergency room doctors.”