Oh my, it's been a while...
Wow, it's May, '09 and this will be my first entry of this year. Sheesh, I seem to be stuck in this glacial pace, but I'm hoping the summer is going to see some thawing heeheehee! I've been on a mental rollercoaster ride these past few weeks, so I've gone and salvaged some short short stories I've had languishing at fictionpress. It's like visiting a forgotten distant relative your parents didn't want to talk about.
After seeing this, I've wondered at the strange, wacky, and sordid ideas that were bouncing around in the echo chamber of my skull back then...
The tattoo is nothing awesome to behold, yet its sheer beauty lies in its simplicity. Its location: smack dab in the center of the lower back, in the hollow, in the shallow hanging valley above the crevasse. The tattoo glows when caribou migrate in the frozen wastes of the north, but not when you give talking cats a bowl of heavy cream during a blue moon.
I should know because I inked it, and the person who commissioned the work is now lying on my living room floor: dead.
I look out the window and suddenly realize that I am out of ink. No one knows my plight better than the mice and cockroaches that dwell with me. I talk about the harbor and how it is slowly dying from want of dead fish. The old pier at the harbor is rotting, and I can smell it from my empty kitchen.
I chuckle briefly and duck as a shadow passes by the window; it is a game I always play. Sometimes I watch the house across the harbor. The people in it know that I live here and they always direct clients to my door. They have never set foot in this house, which is the only one on this side of the harbor. I do not know how long I have been here.
The wallpaper is peeling.
Has it been that long already? I have looked at the calendar so many times, but something keeps blurring my eyes, and the numbers and days all shift into an incomprehensible haze. It is frustrating.
I forgot to mention that my limbs are chained to the floor. The chains are long enough for me to reach certain items and perform certain bodily functions within my dwelling place.
I never leave the house.
Sometimes my bindings allow me to defend myself from irate visitors, especially clients who disagree with my one and only policy, but this almost never happens. Unfortunately, my last piece of work lies not too far away from the front door.
Every day I gaze at the tattoo on the body.
I thank the cold weather for not letting the corpse rot quickly. I wonder who my next client will be. They always come by for a tattoo. They always follow the rules. The people in the house across the harbor have disappeared, except for the fellow lying near my front door.
Perhaps I should open a window. I notice the flies are slowly creeping beneath the front door. I watch them dance delicately over the corpse’s pale skin, waltzing in and out of the nostrils and tapping their tiny feet against the dried pebbly surface of the lolling tongue clenched by the yellowing picket fence of teeth.
My only policy is simple. All I ever ask for payment is a piece of skin; payment up front. It could be skin from any part of their bodies and it must always be a certain size.
I must keep an updated portfolio for future clients, and what better ground for tattoos than a piece of skin.
The days pass slowly and the sound of maggots feasting is soothing.
After seeing this, I've wondered at the strange, wacky, and sordid ideas that were bouncing around in the echo chamber of my skull back then...
The tattoo is nothing awesome to behold, yet its sheer beauty lies in its simplicity. Its location: smack dab in the center of the lower back, in the hollow, in the shallow hanging valley above the crevasse. The tattoo glows when caribou migrate in the frozen wastes of the north, but not when you give talking cats a bowl of heavy cream during a blue moon.
I should know because I inked it, and the person who commissioned the work is now lying on my living room floor: dead.
I look out the window and suddenly realize that I am out of ink. No one knows my plight better than the mice and cockroaches that dwell with me. I talk about the harbor and how it is slowly dying from want of dead fish. The old pier at the harbor is rotting, and I can smell it from my empty kitchen.
I chuckle briefly and duck as a shadow passes by the window; it is a game I always play. Sometimes I watch the house across the harbor. The people in it know that I live here and they always direct clients to my door. They have never set foot in this house, which is the only one on this side of the harbor. I do not know how long I have been here.
The wallpaper is peeling.
Has it been that long already? I have looked at the calendar so many times, but something keeps blurring my eyes, and the numbers and days all shift into an incomprehensible haze. It is frustrating.
I forgot to mention that my limbs are chained to the floor. The chains are long enough for me to reach certain items and perform certain bodily functions within my dwelling place.
I never leave the house.
Sometimes my bindings allow me to defend myself from irate visitors, especially clients who disagree with my one and only policy, but this almost never happens. Unfortunately, my last piece of work lies not too far away from the front door.
Every day I gaze at the tattoo on the body.
I thank the cold weather for not letting the corpse rot quickly. I wonder who my next client will be. They always come by for a tattoo. They always follow the rules. The people in the house across the harbor have disappeared, except for the fellow lying near my front door.
Perhaps I should open a window. I notice the flies are slowly creeping beneath the front door. I watch them dance delicately over the corpse’s pale skin, waltzing in and out of the nostrils and tapping their tiny feet against the dried pebbly surface of the lolling tongue clenched by the yellowing picket fence of teeth.
My only policy is simple. All I ever ask for payment is a piece of skin; payment up front. It could be skin from any part of their bodies and it must always be a certain size.
I must keep an updated portfolio for future clients, and what better ground for tattoos than a piece of skin.
The days pass slowly and the sound of maggots feasting is soothing.