Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  I wanted to laugh at how ludicrous his ideas were. A cartoon image of a cowboy riddled with absurd bullet holes, drinking a glass of water and spewing it like a fountain from his Swiss-cheesed chest filled my mind. But instead of laughing at him, I countered his twisted logic: “But you’re also getting some fresh stuff put back inside, just like with the tire. Fresh stuff. And it’s good for ya, too.” I crossed my arms and nodded, thinking I’d had him.

  He shook his head. “But it’s not my stuff. It’s not me. It’s a little part of you, and Corky, and old Tattoo Joe, and every other artist that ever took a needle to my flesh, but it’s just not me inside anymore.” His voice crackled like a beaten man wrestling gravel. “It’s like I’ve leaked out of my skin—I’ve become an empty shell of a man. Literally!”

  I leaned forward, holding on to what little patience remained, and tried to convince him. “But those tattoos are yours, Shorty. Forever. They are a part of you, a part that you wanted to bring to the surface and show the world. They’re your own identity, man. That’s what getting inked is all about!”

  He gave me a look that said I didn’t have a clue. And then he slowly stood up and tossed on his leather vest with strained effort, as if his palms were large rusty weights. Like an angry turtle, he dragged his feet toward the door in bitter silence. He opened the door to my shop to exit, and the cowbell clang of the doorjamb lasted so long you’d think there was a funeral at the local church. Then he twisted his leathery neck to face me, looking disappointed. “I don’t mean to blame you for it. It was all my idea in the first place. But don’t be surprised if I’m not around much longer. I might be right, and I might be wrong, but something funny is going on with me, inside and out. I ain’t losing my marbles, though. And if I am, it’s because I’m fading away like a damned ghost.”

  He slammed the door behind him—anger had obviously given him a little kick of energy.

  And then he was gone.

  I mean gone. Vanished. As he straddled his Harley out front and kick started the old hog, his image faded like a white-sheeted ghost straight out of a low-budget horror movie. His dim afterimage was burned on my mind like a flashbulb, and then the space that he and his bike took up on the road shimmered like heatwaves on Arizona highways. I watched in awe as he disappeared, forever. I thought I was fainting, by the way everything seemed to go all melty after that. The walls of my shop blurred, the streets outside turned smooth gray and wobbly—and then the cars, and the people, and the sky, and the earth, and the universe itself turned into one giant draining whirlpool of color, and….

  And suddenly—in the back of my mind—I realized that Shorty was still alive. Not a ghost, his soul stolen by the puncture of an ink-dripping needle. Just a man, getting old, riding on bald tires, trying to understand the changes going on inside of him. Do you think he’ll ever figure it out? Maybe not.

  But I think I just did.

  It was all me.

  I was the one who had given everything up, pouring myself into other people’s skins, giving up a tiny part of myself each time the needle entered another man’s flesh. Like a transfusion gone bad—I drew more than just blood. I created my coffin. A coffin of flesh.

  A coffin of someone else’s flesh.

  Well, that’s about everything I can remember. Later, everything just kinda splintered, and I ended up here in this alligator suit, right next to you, Baby. Well, part of me anyway. It’s kinda cool the way you see the world differently from the perspective of a man’s hairy stomach or a woman’s soft thigh or a punk’s sweaty bicep, all at the same time. Like having a million eyes, sight in places you’ve never even seen before. I had no idea I did so many tattoos! And so many clients! But….

  But thank God I did. How long do you think Shorty will last?

  I mean, hell, he’s old. His skin ain’t exactly comfortable, either, ya know? It’s like wearing dirty clothes.

  Oh, please don’t cry, Vargas girl. Let’s talk about something else, okay? Like, what’s your real name anyway?

  That’s nice. I like the sound of that. So what’s your story?

  COPYCATS

  I’d worked on the kid’s body for three months straight. The terrifying fang-faced owl on his right shoulder blade was first, then came the screaming demon on his left bicep, and then finally the evil, spit-dripping hooded cobra rising from a pit of snakes that trailed up from above his pubic region. All were mine—sort of.

  See, this kid—who called himself Johnny Vegas—didn’t let me do these tattoos freehand. Nor were they taken from my flash. This punk had the guts to make me draw line for line from Polaroid snapshots of somebody else’s tattoos.

  Sure, I did a good job of copying them, and the punk paid well. I’d be proud of my work, too, if I hadn’t figure out what he was up to. You see, the dumb son of a bitch was making me an accessory to murder.

  * * *

  It was the last day I was to see Johnny, to finish up the color fill-ins on the cobra that hissed from above his belly button. He walked into my shop singing the latest song by Thorn of Crowns, the new heavy metal pop band that was racing up the charts. He was wearing a set of headphones, singing with his horrible imitation of Diesel Thorn’s voice as his blonde hair swung back to front atop his thrashing head. He looked so corny that I had to laugh.

  He came up to my desk and ripped off the headphones. “What’s up, Corky?”

  I rolled my eyes at him as the tinny music continued to flow full blast from the tiny speakers of his headphones. “Turn that off, will you?”

  He chewed his gum, popped it at me, and then grudgingly clicked the player off. Then he took off his black concert T-shirt, revealing my fresh but unfinished work on his stomach. “Looks good, Corky. Let’s finish it up today, okay? I got places to go, people to see.”

  I ignored his pushy punk attitude and went to my table to prep my needles. Johnny plopped down into my chair and then pushed it back so it tilted at the proper angle. I could tell he was in more of a rush than usual from that move. He was so lazy the other times I worked with him that I basically had to drag him by the arm to the chair. There was something eerie about his sudden desire to get to work. He was a different man—a man with a hidden mission.

  Or maybe he was just getting used to it all.

  The photo he had me copying from still dangled from the wall I’d taped it to the day before. It was a snapshot of the cobra tattoo on another man’s hairy gut, the snake eyes square like dice with emerald dots for pupils above the dagger-like forked tongue that whipped out between widespread and sharp jaws. It was a decent tat, but I knew I could do better.

  I looked down at Johnny’s tat to compare the two. I’d finished tracing an outline on Johnny’s gut the day before, and today I’d have to finish shading it in and setting those emerald snake eyes into place. As incomplete as the outline was, it kind of looked like a monster penis peeking over the top of Johnny’s jeans.

  I had to laugh at the sight of it.

  Johnny looked up at me accusingly. “What’s so funny, Corky? You ain’t high, are you man?”

  I smirked at the kid. “You know I don’t smoke when I got work to do, boy. And even if I did, it’d be none of your fucking business.”

  Johnny stared at me, his eyes red laser beams. Then he turned away and sighed. His voice turned sad and pitiful. “I’m sorry, Corky. It’s just that…I don’t know. I really want to get this thing done today. It has to be complete before seven tonight. After all the planning and work that’s gone into it, I can’t let anything go wrong, that’s all.”

  “What work? I’ve done all the work, kid. That’s what you pay me for.”

  “I know…never mind. Let’s just get it done.”

  I put on my gloves and got ready to get to business. As I clicked the inker on, I reassured him. “Don’t worry, this here snake will be d
one in no time.”

  I began to shade in the scales of the serpent, mimicking the photograph perfectly. Each minute scale had its own detail to it: a gleam of white here, a dab of black there. I used a black and green mix to fill in the darker shades. And then I was ready to do the most detailed part of all: the eyes.

  As I prepped a new needle, I studied the photo, to make sure all was correct. So far, so good, but the eyes would be difficult. They looked so real and so green that you’d think they were ripped right from the sockets of a living human.

  Johnny was nervously tapping his foot, looking down at his stomach. I had to ask him: “Where’d you get this picture, anyway? This is some damn good work.”

  “Oh, nowhere.”

  It was then that I realize that Johnny was hiding something. I could tell by the wimpy sound of his voice, and the way that snake just stared at me, daring me to discover its hidden truth.

  I studied the picture harder, and then noticed something small and white in the lower left-hand corner that I hadn’t paid attention to before. It was a number: 67. It seemed odd that there would be a number on the man’s stomach, but I’d seen plenty of folks get numbers tattooed on their flesh: some folks put anniversary dates in their skin, some bros put the years they did time. A number could be a Bible verse or a body count. Numbers could mean anything.

  I wondered if Johnny wanted the number, too. I asked him.

  He seemed puzzled. “Number? What number? What are you talking about?”

  I pulled the photo off the wall and handed it to him. As he studied it, I cracked open a beer and sipped on it.

  He handed me back the picture and waved his hand at me, grinning. “Naw, I don’t want the stupid number. Just the cobra.”

  “Okay, if you say so.” I set back to work on the beast’s eyes, filling the dark circles with the brightest green ink I had.

  And then it hit me. The numbers in the photo were just too damned perfect to be tattoos. They were page numbers. Johnny had taken a Polaroid photo of a picture in a magazine, and tried to pass it off as a real snapshot. I didn’t know why he would do such a thing, but it didn’t really matter. He was trying to fool me, and that was enough to catch my interest.

  I smiled to myself. The little weasel wasn’t as tricky as he thought.

  “You could go to jail for this, you know?”

  His head snapped up. “What! How do you know?” I didn’t know a damned thing, but somehow I’d pressed a button that set him off. I said, “It’s obvious, ain’t it?”

  “Maybe it is. But that’s the point.”

  “Huh?”

  “Being obvious is what it’s all about!” A maniacal grin began to grow on his face, and then he started humming the same little tune by Thorn of Crowns that he was singing when he walked into the shop.

  The kid was crazy. I grabbed my beer from the table and finished it, trying my best to ignore him. Then I crossed my arms and frowned at him, waiting for him to finish his insane little tirade.

  Johnny’s cackle subsided, but he kept on grinning at me like the devil.

  “Are you done being an ass, so I can finish your tattoo?”

  He nodded, grinning.

  As I put the finishing touches into his flesh, Johnny rambled aimlessly, talking about this and that while I tried my best to ignore him.

  “Diesel Thorn is God, man. They say he’s the new Jim Morrison, but I think he plays guitar better than he sings. I’d call him the new Hendrix! He hates all that media attention, though. I don’t know why! If I was him, I’d love it. Fame, man, is something to be treasured. And Diesel Thorn is one famous dude. Hell, he’s even gonna be more famous than Elvis, man, I just know it.” His eyes lit up like stars: “I want to be just like him, Corky. And I will!”

  I barely heard his chatter, but then something clicked in my mind, and I instantly knew where the pictures were from. It was so obvious, now that I saw them right in front of me. They were taken from one of those rock ‘n’ roll mags. These were Diesel Thorn’s tattoos and Johnny was having me copy them line for line. He loved his little heavy metal idol so damned much that he wanted to look just like him.

  It was pathetic. Not the fact that he was a fan—hell, metal is the only music I’ll listen to without puking—but it was so pitiful for Johnny to want to emulate Thorn to the point of looking just like the man! To not have a life of his own to express. It has always been my belief that a tattoo is something sacred and unique for the individual wearer; it brings out something that is totally special about the person who bears it, and it should be one of a kind. To mark this kid up like his idol was an insult to his humanity. It defaced his uniqueness and his individual personality. Johnny wasn’t expressing himself by getting these tattoos…he was a pawn for someone else’s expression, a walking advertisement.

  But still, Johnny paid well. And he was certainly earnest. Not to mention happy. Always make the client happy, regardless….

  I caught the tail end of one of Johnny’s sentences as I laid down the final shade on the cobra: “…can’t wait to go to the concert tonight. It’s gonna be a blast.” His stomach jittered as he burst out laughing again, and I almost fucked up the entire tattoo. “A BLAST! Ha! I kill myself sometimes!”

  The poor kid made absolutely no sense to me. I was beginning to think that maybe he was the one who was high.

  I stood up and set down my needle. Enough was enough. The tattoo was as done as I wanted it to be. As far as I was concerned, I wanted this psycho punk out of my shop. “All done, Johnny. Told you it wouldn’t take too long.” I sat down at my desk and propped up my legs. “There’s a mirror back there on the wall. Go check yourself out and let me know if you like it.”

  He stood up and limped to the back of the room. Limped. I’d never seen him limp before and I looked down at his feet to see if I could find a reason for it. There was a huge lump in his jeans, right above his ankle. He was limping because he was concealing something heavy in his sock…a knife? A gun? Whatever it was, I was glad that he was almost out of my hair.

  Johnny was in the back of the shop for what seemed like hours, gawking at himself at different angles like a beauty queen. At one point, I heard him shout: “I look JUST LIKE HIM! No one will be able to tell the difference!”

  When he came back, I faked seriousness and said: “You really could go to jail, man. You stole that photograph from a magazine—you plagiarized those tattoo designs and broke every copyright law in the book! You’re just lucky a guy like me doesn’t want anything to do with the cops, or I’d have reported your ass.”

  For the slightest of moments, Johnny looked stunned. Then he bowed his head and mocked shame: “I’m sorry, sir.”

  I chuckled. The kid wasn’t so bad after all. He put on his shirt and broke out his wallet. He slipped me a few hundred dollar bills and then shook my hands solidly, like a politician. “You do great work, Corky. I knew you could do it. You’re the best.” He grinned at me, and then slipped his headphones back over his ears. He pushed play on his player and it was so loud I could hear the Thorn of Crowns’ song lyrics as he walked out of my door: “Life is freedom from death is freedom from life is freedom from…” on and on and on.

  * * *

  That stupid song stuck in my mind until it hit me around two in the morning. Johnny knew that he could go to jail when I mentioned it, but he had no idea what plagiarism was, or what I was talking about. He had planned something dangerous, something criminal, and by the time I figured it all out, it was much too late to do anything about it.

  The Thorn of Crowns concert would be over with, and so would Diesel Thorn’s life.

  It made perfect sense, and I cursed myself for being too blind to see it when I had the chance to stop him. Johnny wanted to look just like Diesel Thorn because, like he said, he wanted to be him. Literally! He was going to
kill him. Shoot him, probably. That’s why he got such a laugh out of the word “blast” and that’s why he carried something heavy in his sock. I’d seen Diesel Thorn on the television and when I thought about it the resemblance was amazing. Johnny Vegas had the same hair, the same facial structure, the same shitty voice…everything! And because of me, he also had has tattoos. All he’d have to do was get rid of the body and he could step right into Diesel’s shoes, unnoticed.

  But the next day, I wasn’t too sure. See, Diesel Thorn did die that night, shot dead in his hotel room. The papers said it was suicide. The rock world mourned.

  And so did I. Not because Diesel Thorn was dead, but because I have the sneaking suspicion that the body they found that hotel room was someone else altogether, and that the real Diesel Thorn finally found a way to get out of the media’s camera eye permanently. Life is indeed a stage, but Diesel turned the tables. He took Johnny’s life to stage his own death.

  It’s the only explanation that makes sense. If Johnny’s plan would have worked, the death wouldn’t have been in the papers.

  Johnny might have been right about one thing, though. Thorn is probably gonna be more famous than Elvis. And I’m sure there’ll be plenty of rumors that Diesel, just like Elvis, is still alive and living in seclusion, somewhere in America, land of the free.

  THE LIVING TATTOO

  Spike rolled off his Harley-Davidson t-shirt and tossed it on the floor. Tattoos covered his body, as if his chest and arms had been dipped in psychedelic ink.