I tattooed my tongue to pretend I was a rebel to get back at my parents.

Me and my mother had been fighting again. It was probably the third time that week. I didn't like that I was being treated like a child despite turning almost 19. In my mother's eyes though, I was a rebel, an uncontrollable and messy teen that needed to be disciplined. I tried remarking that when she was my age she did all kinds of crazy things, riding around with boys on motorcycles and smoking.

In reality I was a rather calm and sensible person. My grades were great and I was helping out around the house several times per week. My parents also had issues with the type of friends I was hanging out with. And that I was constantly breaking their arbitrary 7 o'clock curfew.

There was nothing wrong with my friends either; we were a completely normal tight-knit gang of teenagers that been hanging out for years. Sure, we pranked a few neighbors from time to time. But it was all harmless jokes.

One time, we had stolen Mrs. Larsson's clothes that were hanging out to dry and hung them up on her neighbor's yard. And Mr. Roberts, who sometimes mowed his lawn way too early in the morning got grass in his mailbox for a year. We let all neighborhood kids in on the prank and they had a blast keeping up the work.

Anyhow, so apparently I was painted out to be an unabiding black sheep teenager. And my little shit turd brother relished in pretending to be a golden child, always parading his obviously faked grades in front of our parents. Honestly, I love my brother, I'd tried to prank him back many many times but he'd always come out unscathed but I digress.

I needed an unusually devious plan to get back at my parents and I knew just what to do. If I was already the problem child, why not go all in? I'd show them a real rebellion. I started out slowly, first gradually changing my looks and subsequently my way of communication. One day I'm wearing a leather jacket, ragged clothes and using heavy slangs and slurs. I don't think the thick mascara went unnoticed either. It went on for weeks: I put in red and blue highlight extensions into my hair, I blasted trash metal in my room when they came home from work and I hid small transparent plastic bags with flour in different places in my room.

It was at this point that Simon, a guy in my friend group, flashed a tattoo he'd gotten of a 'leviathan'—some creepy-ass sea monster. I knew I had to get one too. But I didn't like the permanency of a tattoo but Simon retorted that a tattoo on the tongue would vanish within a few months. Bingo!

I debated whether to get an axolotl, or a fish or some monster. So I asked the tattoo artist to do his worst.

It was so painful, I kept moving my tongue, making the job incredibly difficult for the inker. We had to take frequent breaks due to me screaming and the excess ink running down my throat almost made me puke. It was torture, not only for me but for the small audience that had collected around me too.

One day my parents get home to a dark smokey house. I’d pulled all the fuses except for the ones powering the kitchen appliances and the living room. My brother had wanted to play video games. I was boiling a meat stew in a cauldron wearing a long leather coat. Posters of goats covered the wall and an upside-down crucifix hung in the door post. Candle lights decorated a pentagram on the floor where the kitchen table had previously stood. And classical violins played from the living room stereo player.

As creeped out parents entered the kitchen from the hallway, I looked over to my parents in a crooked posture and intently stared and loudly whispered with the the slimiest saliva voice I could muster: "Welcome home, Mother, kyaahh. And welcome home, Father," I hissed, stretching out my aching tongue with a grotesque, wet WLOOOUGHGHGH.

Got them.