Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition

by Arnzen, Michael A.

  “What seems to be the trouble, now, Mister, uh…Spike?” I asked, suddenly uncomfortable. I don’t get many bikers in my office—most are too proud to go to a doctor for help, I guess.

  “Just look,” he said with a voice like cracking granite. “Just look at my back!”

  I obeyed, not wanting to get on his bad side. He had a hairy back: dark curly hairs matted across his shoulder blades like an animal. A bear, I thought. He looks like a bear.

  “See it, Doc?”

  I looked again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Beneath the hair was a tattoo—pretty good artwork—of a bearded biker straddled on a large chopper, popping an outrageous wheelie and trailing tread. It was better than the sort of tattoo I would expect to see on the guy’s back; it was more realistic than the regular skulls and snakes I’d seen earlier on his chest.

  “See what?” I asked. “No scars, no cuts…nothing.”

  Nothing but lotsa hair, Yogi.

  “The tat, doc, look at the tat. Tell me I’m not imagining it!”

  By ‘tat’ I assumed he meant ‘tattoo.’ “Yeah, it’s pretty nice, but so what?”

  He sighed, and looked over his shoulder at me: “Is it moving?”

  “Huh?” I asked, wondering if he meant that I should feel emotionally moved by the artwork, like when you see a beautiful painting.

  “Moving, Doc. The tattoo.”

  I understood. He was literal-minded. “No, it’s just…laying there.”

  “Well it wasn’t last night! I got it put on my back two days ago, and when I woke up yesterday, it had moved. See how it’s on my right shoulder blade now?”

  “Yeah,” I said, slowly nodding, confirming the obvious.

  “Well it was on my left shoulder blade the day before!”

  Uh-oh, I thought, searching the room for a weapon. I’ve got a psycho biker in my office!

  I backpedalled toward the drawer full of hypodermic needles…just incase I’d need them. “That’s impossible,” I said calmly.

  “And you see that tread mark it’s leaving? That wasn’t there when I got the tattoo!” He twisted around on the table, tearing the butcher’s paper on it.

  I backed away. He was near tears: “It’s moving, Doc! It’s alive! And it’s burning rubber across my back!”

  “Now, now,” I said raising a hand defensively. “Maybe there’s some other explanation…”

  “But I can feel it under my skin, like fire. I know I’m not crazy…I can’t be. It itches. I know I’m not imagining that.”

  I looked at his face. His eyes were black rings, as if a lack of sleep had punched him in both sockets. Whatever he was suffering from, he believed that the tattoo on his back was moving, no doubt about it. Perhaps he had gotten infected with something in the needle. I decided to act like I was taking him seriously, to help him walk through this predicament logically: “Have you ever had a tattoo move on your body before?”

  “No,” he said, looking down at his chest. The skull above his right nipple seemed to smile. The snake that weaved its way through the skull’s eyes slivered over to a nudie girl tattooed on the left side of his ribcage. His body was artful, but the placements looked like the sketchy first draft of a comic book, with a lot of unfilled panes. “But I got these other tats done by a different artist. You don’t think that the new guy possessed it somehow, do you?” He paused and shot me a sneer. “Now that I think about it, that bastard sure did look like one of those occult freaks…”

  “No, I doubt he possessed your tattoo,” I said, holding back a laugh. “But maybe he wasn’t as hygienic as your other artist.”

  He frowned, as if not understanding the word ‘hygienic.’ Figured.

  “Listen,” I said, walking over to my desk and picking up a clipboard and a pen. “I don’t think you’re crazy. But I’m going to prescribe some medicine that might make that biker on your back run out of gas, okay?” I scribbled down a dosage of tranquilizers, ripped it free, and handed him the paper. “I want you to take these, twice a day, and then return here again when the prescription runs out, okay?”

  All his muscles loosened and sagged, as if he’d given up even trying to convince me. “All right, Doc.” He slipped his black t-shirt back on, and pocketed the prescription. “But if it’s still moving when I come back next time, will you promise me you’ll take it off? Maybe even do some surgery on it, or somethin’?”

  “Sure,” I said, eager to get to my next patient.

  He left, and minutes later I heard his bike outside growl to life and burn away with a squeal, as if he’d just robbed a bank or something. I dimly wondered if his visit was just a ploy to get some free drugs, as I asked my receptionist to bring in the next visitor.

  * * *

  I didn’t expect to ever see him again, but he showed up two weeks later, after the tranquilizers were empty.

  And from the manic look on his face when he walked into my office, it didn’t look like the tranqs were working at all.

  He tossed the empty brown bottle in the air and I involuntarily caught it. “Well, Doc, I took your damned medicine, but it didn’t do nothin’.” He sat down on the table and yanked off his t-shirt. “See my back now?”

  I looked. A humongous orange and black-spotted cougar prowled through the jungle of hair on his shoulder blades. “What’s this? The motorcycle turned into a cougar?”

  “Duh,” Spike said, chuckling to himself. “It’s a cover up, Doc. You know…I had my old artist cover that weird bike tat up so I wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.”

  “I see,” I said, imagining the pain of having needles jabbed into the same place twice.

  “And do you see the tread marks there?”

  I leaned forward, looking closer. The black trail of tread was still there. “Oh yeah. Why didn’t he cover those up, too?”

  “He did.”

  “Huh?”

  “He did cover it up.” Spike coughed nervously. “But that damned motorcycle tattoo drove out from under it!”

  I traced the squeal marks with my eyes. The black lines of tread ran out from under the cougar’s right paw and extended clear under Spike’s hairy armpit. “What is this, some kind of joke? This can’t be real…” I touched his body, feeling for paint, checking for marker stains—but it was the real McCoy.

  Spike turned around and showed me his chest. The bearded biker of ink was there, his wheelie popped even higher, the tread mark smoking behind his rear tire…and the bearded bastard of ink was smiling.

  “I told ya, Doc. It’s alive. I never see it move—and I’ve stared at it for hours without a blink—but it somehow moves whenever I’m not looking. There’s nothing I can do about it but get it cut out. I don’t trust those laser removal things—that ain’t gonna do shit. So I’m counting on you to make good on your promise.”

  “What promise?” I still stared at the tattoo, transfixed, amazed, hoping to catch some sign of movement, but all it did was hold its obnoxious smile.

  “You promised you’d get rid of it. And I don’t care how—hell, you can burn the thing right off my body if you want to—just do it! Please! It itches so damned much. It feels like my chest is just one big nest of mosquitos or somethin’!”

  “Put your shirt back on,” I said, stalling, not wanting to look at his tattoos anymore. “I can’t perform surgery right now, today. We’ll have to schedule an appointment.”

  Spike’s face turned ugly, twisted like the look of a killer. “You and me had a deal, Doc.” He punctuated with a finger pointed between my eyes. “A deal.”

  I nervously coughed. “I can’t help you right now. I’ve got people lined up outside.”

  Spike’s face was beet red. “How about tonight, after hours? C’mon, Doc. You gotta help me, man!”

  I closed my eyes, still not
believing what was happening. Still, I gave in: “Okay,” I said. “Tonight.”

  Spike cooled down, and left my office. I popped a pill, before moving to my next patient.

  * * *

  He returned at eight that night, and I could smell alcohol on his breath. Apparently, he wasn’t as tough as he acted. And because he was drunk, I wouldn’t be able to use the usual anesthesia for the surgery.

  “You ready, Doc?” he asked as he swaggered over to the table.

  “Not really, Spike. But I guess there’s no other options.”

  He took off his shirt, and tossed it to the floor. His chest was beaded with sweat—fear sweat. He leaned back on the table, and waited.

  I put on some gloves, grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol, and prepped a gauze pad to clean the inked skin. Normally I would have gone through more trouble, but this was covert surgery: work that would never show up in a file. If so, I’d be laughed out of my practice.

  I approached Spike’s chest, and looked for the tattoo.

  And it was gone.

  I did a double-take, and then leaned forward to look for the tattooed biker, thinking it had moved somewhere else on his chest since earlier that afternoon. The tread marks from earlier were nowhere to be seen. All I could find was the familiar faded ink of the skull, snake, and naked girl.

  “Where did it go, Spike?”

  “Huh?” He leaned up on his elbows. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “That tattoo. It’s not there anymore.”

  He frowned and looked down at his chest. Then he began patting himself down, trying to feel for it. “What the…“

  “Turn over,” I said, supposing that it had driven itself to his back, coming full circle.

  Spike obeyed. And then I spotted it. On his left shoulder blade. No wheelie-popping, no tread mark. Just a regular tattoo. “Ah, there it is.”

  “Let me see,” Spike said anxiously.

  I handed him a mirror, and he checked himself out. His lips slowly fell open—I thought he’d drool, by the look on his face.

  “What is it, Spike? What’s wrong now?”

  “It…it’s back. Back where it was! The same as the day I got it!”

  I moved behind him, and double-checked the artwork. It did look different: the character wasn’t smiling and the motorcycle wasn’t doing anything. It was lifeless, dead. Still life.

  Spike dropped the mirror. “I can’t feel it anymore, either. Holy shit!”

  I just raised my eyebrow.

  “You don’t think we just imagined it, do you?”

  “No,” I said, not really sure. “But there’s no sense in removing it now, is there?” Thank God, I thought, happy to have reality return.

  “Maybe those drugs you gave me just kicked in?” he asked, his eyes wide open, his face eager.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said, tossing the alcohol-dripping gauze into the trashcan and stifling a laugh at his idiotic logic. “You’re healed, Spike.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “You can go now. Put your shirt back on. It’s late.” I provided a hand for him to shake. “And let’s not mention this to anyone, okay?”

  “You got my word, Doc!” Spike jumped up from the table, and leaned forward to get his shirt. “Thanks, man. Thanks for helping me out!”

  “No problem,” I said. He stretched his arms out to slip on his t-shirt, the tattoos on his chest stretching along with his skin. And then I saw the nudie girl, right before the shirt came down to cover it up. My mouth fell open.

  “Later, Doc,” he said smiling, and then charged out the door, eager to get back to his drinking.

  I closed my eyes and listened intently as his bike revved up and peeled away, allowing the sound to rumble in my ears, to convince me that it was all real, that it all had really happened.

  But I still couldn’t get the image of that inked nudie girl on his chest out of my mind as I locked up my office and headed for the liquor store, needing a drink myself.

  The girlie tattoo’s stomach was bulging, purple, raised from the skin like a nasty welt.

  I now knew what that tattooed biker was smiling about.

  As I sat at the bar that night, trying to erase that horrifying picture out of my mind with double shots of bourbon, I figured the time had come to move my practice to another city. For one thing I never wanted any part of this guy’s insanity ever again. I didn’t want be there when Spike returned. I gave him maybe nine months, tops. I don’t know how to explain what was happening with his tattoos, but it all came down to one thing: I had to move, because I really didn’t want to be around when he came looking for me to deliver its babies.

  For even more bonus features—artwork, photographs, and other material related to the history of Grave Markings—visit this exclusive web link:

  http://gorelets.com/books/grave-markings/XX/

  About the Author

  Grave Markings was Michael Arnzen’s first novel, and won both the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award in 1994.

  In the two decades since, Arnzen has added three additional Stokers to his bookshelf, and has produced several acclaimed works of fiction and poetry. The book Horror Fiction: An Introduction called him “the master of minimalism” for his proclivity toward short formats, especially flash fiction (100 Jolts: Shockingly Short Stories) and palm-sized poetry (The Gorelets Omnibus). The best of his work can be found in the book, Proverbs for Monsters, which also won a Stoker Award for Fiction Collection in 2007.

  A longtime proponent of experimentation in the horror genre, Michael Arnzen’s writing has been adapted to audio (Audiovile), short film (Exquisite Corpse), electronic media (Gorelets) and even refrigerator poetry magnets (The Fridge of the Damned). When Raw Dog Screaming Press published his second novel, Play Dead, they released a sculpture-bound “Grim Grimoire” edition along with a custom deck of playing cards inspired by the book. Arnzen continues to explore electronic formats with ebooks through his imprint, Mastication Publications, and publishes The Goreletter: an award-winning newsletter of the bizarre, hilarious, and pithy. Subscribe free at http://gorelets.com

  When he’s not writing, Arnzen teaches as tenured faculty in the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University, near Pittsburgh, PA.