Ink

by Damien Walters Grintalis

  Nothing.

  He moved the skewer over to the tip of the tail, pressed again, and hissed under his breath as he broke the skin. A thin trail of red trickled out, nothing more than blood—his own blood. Five more strikes with the skewer in rapid succession, along the edge of one wing, five more tiny holes, grunting under his breath at each sharp sting of pain.

  “Come on out, Frank,” he said, tapping his arm with the side of the skewer again, smearing blood across the amber and gold.

  And again. And again. And again. Hard enough to leave red welts on his flesh that distorted the tattoo’s edges.

  “Come. On. Out.”

  He gripped the skewer tight in his fist and raised it high.

  “I’ll make you come out.”

  Jason caught a ghost of his reflection in the television screen and froze. What the hell was he doing? He dropped the skewer on the coffee table and put his head in his hands. Maybe he was going nuts.

  The blood dried in dark streaks as he sat on the sofa, staring out at nothing. At five-thirty, with the edges of the sky lightening with the sunrise and birdsong chattering in the air, he went upstairs and took the skewer with him.

  Just in case.

  13

  Jason drove down to Fells Point on Thursday after work, stumbled into McAfee’s, and ordered a beer before he sat down.

  Brian frowned. “You look worse than you did at the office. Are you okay, man?”

  “Yeah, I just have a headache,” Jason lied. His head didn’t hurt, but the ache in his arm had popped back in to say hello. A steady throb under the skin, almost in perfect time with the music playing in the background. Jason downed half his beer in one gulp and ignored the look Brian gave him. Inside, a disjointed sensation turned his limbs heavy, as if his body no longer belonged to him, as if everything right had turned wrong. And that everything started with the tattoo. With Frank.

  Jason took another swallow. No, everything started with Sailor. At the bar. A chill raced down his spine; he shook it away and ordered another beer. Brian spoke to him, but his voice floated in the air, vague and formless. Jason nodded in the right places and smiled when needed, but his own thoughts claimed center stage.

  The bar near his house. The night Shelley left.

  The chill again. He turned to look out at the bar. Waitresses walked with trays in their hands, girls in tight tank tops sat in groups of four or five and guys crowded around tables with beer bottles—empty and full—glittering in the overhead lights. Nothing strange or abnormal, but a prickling on the back of his neck said someone watched him. A thick, growling laugh pierced the air, radiating out in an overhanging, mirthless cloud.

  Sailor.

  Jason whipped his head around. No gray halo of hair, no rolling walk, no Sailor, but the laugh, that unmistakable sound, belonged to no one else. The chill turned to a finger of ice, teasing, tickling. A waitress put another beer in front of him, and his hand shook when he picked it up.

  It’s just a bad case of the creeps. That’s all.

  Jason set the bottle on the table, hard enough to send beer splashing out onto the table.

  “What’s wrong?” Brian asked.

  Nothing. Everything. I didn’t read the fine print, you know. That was my mistake. My dad said so.

  “My head is killing me. I’m heading out.”

  “Are you okay to drive? You really don’t look good.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Jason threw money down on the table and headed for the door. The laugh drifted up again, softer, and the finger of ice stabbed and twisted. As he passed a table of guys in tan uniforms, one nodded and looked up with pale green eyes. Moist eyes. Sailor’s eyes. Except it wasn’t Sailor at all but the orderly from the hospital. Even seated, he looked big enough to break Jason in two without breaking a sweat. The hanging light over the table reflected in his bald head and his skin, darker than Jason remembered, gleamed like polished ebony, in stark contrast to the pale

  Sailor’s

  eyes.

  No, it’s just the lighting.

  When one of the other orderlies said something and the not-Sailor laughed again, the taste of beer burned in Jason’s throat, and a slice of pain dug into his stomach. The bite of stale cigarettes clung to their uniforms. The orderly lifted a beer bottle and tipped the mouth in Jason’s direction. He tilted his head back and drank, and Jason’s vision blurred into an image of the homeless man on Shakespeare Street with his bottle of rum, then it was just the orderly again. The pink nightgown on the pinup girl tattoo was bright, even against his dark skin. Her lips were the same vibrant shade of pink, parted suggestively. He’d seen it before and not in the hospital.

  He couldn’t take his eyes from the tattoo. She was a work of art—perfect. She wore a smile that promised sin, but her hidden hand promised hurt and pain. Her breasts were full, straining against the nightgown, her waist tiny, and her hips wide. Long legs peeked out from the nightgown, one drawn up high. Dancer’s legs. Perfume, soft and sweet, like rain and roses, drifted up. A woman like that would make you forget about everything. She would wrap those legs around yours and her hand—

  “Find everything you’re looking for, mister?”

  Jason shook his head, the thoughts of dancer’s legs and full lips drifting away.

  The voice.

  The orderly grinned and gave a short whistle. Part of a song? Jason’s stomach clenched again. Another orderly turned around in his chair. Eyes dulled with too much beer peered out from a broad, not unkind, face.

  “You need something, man?” he asked.

  Jason’s tongue pressed against the back of his teeth, a fat worm looking for the way out.

  No way out of this one, buddy.

  “Hello? Need something?” The same broad–faced orderly.

  Jason pulled his voice up and out. “No, sorry.” He stepped away from the table with heavy feet. He needed to get out.

  Behind him, the orderly broke into a snippet of song. “Had a girl and she sure was fine.”

  The colors of the room swirled brighter; the words of the song wavered and stretched out like the discordant tune from a carousel. The other men burst out laughing, and Jason fled from the bar with the gravelly voice and the whistle echoing in his ears.

  14

  Jason drove home, his thoughts chaos, the city blurring past his windows as sweat seeped from every pore. The orderly had Sailor’s voice and his eyes. It didn’t make sense, but it was the truth. And the laughter. All the same. Sailor without his sailor suit.

  Jason shuddered. And the song. Had he heard it before? He thought he had.

  What did he say?

  “Find everything you’re looking for?” Jason said. His hands clenched on the steering wheel. The homeless man had said the exact same thing. When he stood in front of the tattoo shop, where the door should’ve been. He’d said those same words.

  Doors didn’t disappear. They were either there or they weren’t.

  Tattoos don’t either.

  His cell phone rang, high-pitched and shrill, and he yelled out, unable to keep the sound inside. He looked at the display, and another shudder sent a ripple through his spine—Unknown Caller.

  It’s Sailor.

  The ring again.

  Get a grip, Jason. It could be a telemarketer.

  But he couldn’t get a grip. Not on anything at all.

  Again.

  Because he knew it was Sailor.

  And again.

  Maybe he was calling to see how Jason liked the tattoo now.

  The fifth ring cut off midway, and the steering wheel, sticky with sweat, slipped in his hands, sending his car into the next lane. He spun the wheel too far in the other direction and for one sick, long minute, he thought he’d lost control. The tires slid and slid, then caught and held the road like a lover. A lover in a pink nightgown with long, long legs.

  I need to go home. Go home and…what? Wait up all night, loaded with caffeine? For what?

  For Frank. Jason
exhaled, a long sigh, one step away from a groan. So he could see it with his own eyes.

  So I know.

  He wiped first one hand then the other on his pants.

  Know what? Know nothing. I was sick and thought I saw something, that’s it. The orderly was just a guy, a heavy smoker, and his eyes? Lots of people have green eyes. He might have been wearing contacts for all I know.

  When he finally turned into his driveway, the back of his shirt was wet against his skin. He got out of the car, the windows of his house looming dark and watchful. The faint sound of rubber on concrete pulled his eyes away from his house. The kid, Alex, rode his bike, circling in the street in front. He slowed down, the arc of his circle smaller and smaller with each pass until finally he stopped. If Jason’s doormat held another present, he was going to take it over and give it to the kid’s parents.

  “You sick piece of shit. I know what you did.”

  Their eyes met, and anger bubbled up inside Jason, furious and red. Alex stood motionless, his lank dishwater hair falling past his brows. Jason took one step toward him and in a flash, Alex’s feet turned the pedals, and he flew down the street. With a heavy sigh, Jason walked to his back door; as he drew closer, something on the mat flashed in the moonlight. The anger faded and his steps slowed.

  I hope your parents are home, kid. If not, they’re going to have a nice little surprise waiting for them.

  He stepped up onto the first step and stopped. Nothing. Nothing but the doormat. The flash of something? Only his imagination. A lot of that going around lately.

  Once inside, he locked the door and stood in the middle of his kitchen.

  I should call Mitch. Maybe I could go over and we could watch a movie. It’s not too late. But not a horror movie. Definitely not. Something lighthearted, a nonsensical comedy.

  The girl. The pinup girl on

  Sailor’s

  the orderly’s arm. Long legs and pink lips.

  His original designs. That’s what he said.

  One of the framed pictures on the wall at Sailor’s shop. He remembered the grizzly bear and the girl. Look closer, Sailor said.

  They will not bite.

  15

  The girl in the pink nightgown felt as good as she looked. Jason ran his fingers up her thigh, reveling in her soft skin. Underneath the nightgown, she wore nothing but her own skin, and her lips tasted like bubble gum. She kept her right hand tucked behind her back, ran the fingers of her left hand down his back, and dug her nails in, making him wince.

  “You can call me whatever you want,” she said.

  He whispered her name—Marianne—and pulled her hips closer. She moaned low in her throat, the sound of beautiful danger, but he didn’t care, not tonight. She was beautiful, warm and curved in every spot a woman could curve, her nipples hard against his palms even through the silk of her gown. Her laugh, low and husky, rippled out into the room. He couldn’t take her home to meet his mother, but he could take her to bed. He’d be a fool not to.

  She brought her right hand out from behind her back, and he pulled his hands away from her hips. Her lips curved up in a smile. Naughty girl, the smile said. I’m a very naughty girl. The edge of the straight razor shimmered in the moonlight. She smiled with her perfect pink lips and raised her hand. Jason tried to back up, to get away, but he froze in place. Another laugh slipped from her lips, and she brought the razor closer and closer and—

  Jason woke up with the echoes of his scream still in the room and a sharp pain in his left arm. He sat up and put his hands in his head, his nose filled with the stink of his own sweat. The voices in his head didn’t scream. They whispered dark thoughts of terrible beauty. With a groan, he pulled off his sodden T-shirt and threw it on the floor. His heartbeat thudded with a painful rhythm in his chest, and a slick taste—rotten apples washed down with bitter medicine—coated his tongue.

  Was he going crazy?

  He flipped on the nightstand light and held out his hands. Nothing strange about them. The same hands. The same skin.

  So why do I feel like a stranger? Why do I feel like these aren’t my hands?

  Jason shook his head. A dull ache thudded in the center of his chest. He wanted to call Mitch, but it was two o’clock in the morning. What would he tell her? His tattoo stuck its head out the night he was sick, and he was afraid to be alone? Afraid it might come back? And as if that weren’t enough, what about the guy at McAfee’s who sounded like Sailor, had green eyes like Sailor and laughed like Sailor, who spoke the same words a homeless man had when he went to Sailor’s shop? Only that night, neither door nor shop existed.

  He barked out a harsh laugh. “What the hell is going on?”

  Then his arm rippled, long and lazy, like a mud-thick river after a hurricane’s devastation. Or an animal stretching after a long nap. His mouth dropped open as the skin on his arm rolled and twisted.

  No, no, no. Not again. It wasn’t real. It was—

  “My imagination, that’s all.”

  The tattoo shifted, the lines of the griffin blurred and focused. “This is not real. This can’t happen.” He put his hands over his eyes and counted to five, thinking of Mitch and her smile, the way her hair held tight to the scent of her shampoo. He opened his eyes. The flesh began to rise, stretching up. “No, no. It can’t. It can’t.”

  Yes, it can happen. It is happening because it is real. It’s not ink. What the fuck did Sailor do to me?

  The skin rose another inch, then another. Heat spread out, licking tiny, unseen flames down to his fingertips. A fluttering tingle moved deep inside, the soft press of fur and feathers against bone and muscle.

  Didn’t you read the fine print?!?!

  His father’s voice, not a sorrowful whisper but a scream of panic. Higher and higher, the skin of his arm bubbled up, stretching like taffy until the ears and head emerged. In and of his flesh, yet not Jason. Not him at all, but something living and breathing within. Like a botfly burrowed deep inside. Its limbs shifted; its muscles flexed, pushing up to the surface.

  The griffin blinked eyes filled with malevolence. Once. Twice. Madness and death lay deep inside the green. It breathed a foul stench of rotten meat, warm against his arm. Jason climbed, slid, off the bed. Bright, needle-sharp pain screamed in his arm as unseen talons dug into the soft parts inside. He didn’t care about the pain. It could rip off his arm if it wanted to. He just wanted it to go away.

  He stumbled back away from the bed, and a harsh sound emerged from his throat. And from the griffin: a quiver of constricted wings, heat from its body, the whisk-whisk of a powerful tail swaying in an arc. Not out, but in.

  Inside, inside, inside.

  The taste in his mouth exploded into something noxious and foul. The taste of a thousand dark nightmares or a million lunatic screams. He needed to run, get away. Far away. He clenched his teeth together to hold in the scream pushing to be free, turning it into a terrible sound of chaos and lunacy. He stepped back again, with the sound of rushing blood loud in his ears.

  I can’t get away because it’s in me. It’s inside me!

  One foreleg rose and flexed, the talons sharp. The leg lifted and dropped back down against his skin, and tiny spots of blood

  my blood

  beaded up like crimson pearls around the talons.

  Alive. Not just ink. It’s real. It’s alive. And it’s hungry.

  Jason scrambled back, his feet pounding heavy on the floor. His ankle twisted and he reached out his

  good arm, the griffin-free

  arm. His fingers hit the wall hard; he moaned as the pinkie finger bent back, not far enough to break, but far enough to scream out in protest.

  Can’t get away. Can’t get away.

  The griffin’s other foreleg raised, stepping up-out of his skin like a cartoon character lifting from the pages, except this wasn’t a harmless mouse or cat about to wreak one-dimensional havoc. The legs swelled, grew, taking shape and substance. It leaned forward, breathing its heat, using
its legs to pull its body up and out, its weight nothing more than a kitten’s, its size much the same, straining like a conjoined twin twisting away to break free from the skin binding them together. Jason sank down to his knees.

  I don’t want to see this anymore. Make it stop. Just make it go away.

  His neck ached, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. A smell of smoke, ash and animal musk filled the room, heavy and thick; it stung Jason’s eyes and burned the back of his throat. The chest, proud and majestic, slipped free.

  “You’re. Not. Real. Not real. This is a dream. A bad dream.”

  It tuned its head and gave Jason a long, considering look, then lowered its beak and pulled again.

  Dad, is this what you saw?

  The wings unfolded and kissed warmth against Jason’s skin. A harsh laugh, high-pitched and jittery, broke free from his lips at the touch. He scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand, and it came away wet.

  My own feather pillow. My own griffin. Come on, Frankie-boy, I’ll get your leash and collar and we can walk through the neighborhood.

  The griffin ignored him, intent on breaking free.

  Frank is alive. He is alive, and he’s not friendly at all.

  Small rivulets of blood dripped down Jason’s arm as the griffin’s talons dug in again. The back came into view, sliding out of his skin with a whispering noise like silk against satin and a feel like velvet. The dark gold fur shimmered.

  Another pull and the top curve of the rump emerged, slow and steady, the top of its powerful hind legs, the tufted tail and last, the furred paws, with claws extended. His left arm twitched, empty inside. The griffin perched on his arm, as light as a robin, as heavy as an unavoidable truth.

  This is not a dream, no matter how many times I close my eyes and wish it so. I smell it. It’s alive and it was in me and now it’s free.