Read My Shorts

Ink Wraith

Ink Wraith

Human skin is a wonderful thing. It is also a canvas to those of us who dance ink under the surface. Pain and pleasure mingle in art to produce a life-long reminder of the tattooist's vision and the customer's fetish.

And yet the skin transmits as well as receives. I have practised the art over the long centuries of my penance, and in that time I have learned to read those who come to me for ink dark absolution. I can feel the subtle pulses of muscle and skin and read the darker thoughts contained therein.

The deeply hidden fantasies of some of the customers provide my sustenance, the bitter stygian flow a nectar to my undying hearts: those I am allowed to keep, to draw on, to tap like a farmer draws rubber from the tree. I reap, yet also I sow.

In my darkened basement I inscribe hearts, draw leopards and spike barbed wire on muscled arms. The distant sounds of Jazz from the street above are juxtaposed by the dark rhythm of my tools. Eclectic notes carry a hint of the past, the superstitious musical derivative of ancient rhythm dancing needle-sharp into the epidermis, while mad trumpet blasts French Street above with soul.

Dark magic: rooted deep in the Africa past, alluded to in rhythm, yet remembered by no-one else but me. I am an artist. I facilitate the skin deep architecture, adding to the loops and wires and metal implants of my clientele. Gang marks, lover's hearts, twining vines and Celtic designs: all are grist to my mill.

But the ones who provide me the darkness to match the liquid that flows from my hands are the treasure, my succour. I may harvest, but I also feed their desires, build their hate and add to the paranoia and treachery, subsuming their tendency for peace.

As ink whispers under their skin, the bile of ages infuses and locks to their souls. Patterns spread the wraith, the exquisite pain of the needle disguising the burn as it eats like a cancer into their being.

And they leave empowered, darker, more dangerous, only to return for more as I feed endlessly on their murderous memories and dine on their bitterness.

One day I shall be free. When the dark lord rises again, the whole human race will provide our succour. Until then the ink dark music pounds on...

~

Done for DonnaSharples competition in the Horror mag, May 2013 issue. Story had to be under 400 words and mention French Street. Chose character "The Tattooist". 

This story appears in Issue 14 and was chosen as that month's winner!