“Nancy...she gave me your name and address...said you would help me.”
I relaxed a little and walked to her. The paper was on Baylor’s stationery. Nancy was a nurse I knew there, one of many. They sent me the really sad cases, the ones who commit suicide if they don’t forget. My face softened looking at the girl in front of me. I wondered what catastrophe had happened to her.
“All right kid, how old are you?”
“I don’t know.”
I furrowed my eyebrows at her. “Don’t play with me, kid.”
Tears started welling up in her eyes, and before I knew what was happening, the girl had thrown the hood off her head. There, before me, was a completely bald, completely unmarred, and completely inkless head.
I gaped at her for only a second before I came to my senses. “Oh shit.”
Grabbing her hood, I threw it back over her head and rushed her through the curtains to the back room where I did the tattoos and piercings. I ordered her to stay put while I ran back into the store and flipped the sign to closed. Within a few minutes, I had shut down the whole store to look dark and unavailable. All I could do was hope nobody had seen her enter.
The room she was in had a heavy curtain and no windows, so it would’ve been hard to see whether anyone was inside. When I returned to her, she was looking around frantically. I couldn’t help but stare at her.
“You’re Dakota?”
“Yes,” I said. “Nancy told you to come to me?”
“She said you’d help.”
“What’s your name?”
“I-I don’t know that either.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to force calm into my joints.
“Do you remember anything?”
She shook her head timidly. “I woke up in the hospital and Nancy...she gave me clothes and...Toby...”
The girl started to cry as she hugged herself. I crossed the gap between us and hugged her. I couldn’t help it. The instinct just took over my body. She was like a little bird in my arms as she trembled.
“What’s happening? Why don’t I look like everybody else?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you help me?”
“I can try. Go on now, strip down and let’s see what we are dealing with.”
She seemed hesitant at first but did as I requested. Under the hoodie she wore a small set of teal scrubs Nancy had probably stolen for her. I gasped a little when she removed those. Before me stood the completely nude and perfectly, serenely unmarked body of a young woman. Not one bit of ink stained her skin. She turned around to face me with the small breasts and a face of a teenager on the cusp of womanhood. I put her at about seventeen, maybe eighteen years old from the look of her. Her skin was so new. Babies’ skin wasn’t this clean.
I brought the girl a warm blanket from my sofa, and she curled into it as she sat on a nearby chair. There were some orange sodas in my fridge, and I retrieved a cold one and popped the top. She took it and sipped the thing slowly at first as if she had never held a soda before. Once she got a taste for it, she started gulping down the orange liquid as if it would vanish if she didn’t.
“Whoa, whoa, easy there,” I said coaxing the bottle from her face. “There’s more in the back. Don’t gulp or you’ll hurt your stomach.”
“I’m sorry. What is this stuff? It’s wonderful.”
She took another big swig of the soda.
“It’s just orange soda. You’ve never had orange soda before?”
She shook her head no, and I sat down on the sofa across from her.
“Let’s back up here. What do you remember?”
The girl took a deep breath and let it out like a jagged knife.
“I woke in a hospital. I looked around, and everyone was written all over but me. Doctors were making notes and talking in hushed whispers about me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I know it was about me. Then, they left for the night and Nancy, she’s really nice, she came to me and said I had better get out of there. There was this boy too. He was sweet. He helped me. They said I was in danger, and handed me this paper with your address. She said, ‘Find Dakota, she’ll help.’ Then I came here.”
“That’s all you remember? That’s all you know?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to cry again. “Yes,” she squeaked.
I hugged her as she shook under my arms. My mind grasped at what to do for this girl. She must have had a life at some point. Things had to have happened, had to have been written on this girl at one time, but now, she was alone and frightened, with no history. Not to mention she had a whole body of perfectly pristine skin that any flesh dealer would kill her to possess. A whole body with no history, and no one looking for her.
I pulled away, as her tears began to ease, and held her shoulders. I gazed her into her large brown eyes as she stared back at me. A glimmer of hope flashed in them.
“Listen, you have no life, so we will make you a new one.”
“What?”
“We can’t have you walking around like this. Flesh dealers will pick you up in no time, and that will be the end of you.”
She gasped.
“I will write you a life, a new life, and no one will know the difference. Everything is going to be fine.”
My words held a confidence I did not possess. They came from my lips on their own accord, and damn did they sound convincing. The girl wiped her wet face with the blanket. She seemed to believe in me.
“But...but I have no money.”
“That’s all right. You can pay me in skin.”
She shrank into the chair, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Listen, this is what I do. I cut out bad memories and fix in new skin to write better ones. People pay me this way all the time if they don’t have money. I always need new skin to use, but I never take it unless the person is willing. If you are willing to pay, I will write you a new life.”
“Will it...will it hurt?”
“No. I make my own elixir here. Takes the pain right out of everything, and it tastes like blackberries. There’s no reason anyone should have to suffer.”
She nodded to herself a little. “Okay. Okay, let’s do it.”
Searching in the back, I found an old pair of sweatpants and a pair of clean panties for her. They were a little big on her, being that they were sized for me, but they worked better than her scrubs. She still held the blanket tightly around her shoulders as I mixed up some of my elixir in a bottle. I handed her the bottle when the color changed from milky white to dark purple.
“Sip this. Don’t gulp. Sipping will give you a long, easy buzz. Gulp it down and you will pass out for a long time. While that might sound appealing right now, I need you conscious.”
She nodded and accepted the bottle. It only took a few sips for her lips to turn purple and her shoulders to relax. Her eyes softened and much of the fear left them.
I went about my business, preparing the lights I needed, the ink cartridges, and the laser pen. Never before had I attempted anything nearly this big. My jobs were mainly for erasing the painful things and seamlessly weaving in something more tangible. This was creating a new life from scratch. Where on earth would I begin?
She positioned herself on my chair, which was an old massage chair I had bought off of a corporate massage group that had gone tits up about five years ago. The girl rested her front against the cushions and positioned her face in the head cradle. I fired up the laser pen and loaded the ink cartridge like a bullet in a gun.
My hand hesitated over her perfectly smooth skull. The Maker had given us a break in one major respect. Our childhood was etched on our skulls. That’s where it began. The beginning of your life began right about where your hairline would be and continued down from there. Therefore, most of your embarrassing childhood traumas could easily be covered up later in life by your hair. With me, very little was embarrassing, so I buzzed my hair short on the sides with coif of raven hair on t
he top. This let the whole world see that I had fallen in love with Tommy Singleton behind school the day he gave me a vintage T-shirt and a dried-up rose.
But this girl, what would I write? For that matter, where would her hairline start? I felt her head delicately for some sign of stubble and found none. At last, I discovered the tiniest indention in her skin where a hairline should go and kept my finger on it to mark my place.
“What would you like your birthday to be?”
She was silent for a while. “Sometime when it’s warm.”
That’s how I began. I had seen babies, and I knew how all of our stories started. The wording was always the same, more or less. I did a quick calculation in my head and wrote the words just below her newly found hairline.
This child of mine in all her divinity was born on June Ninth, 2033.
When the sentence was finished, I stopped my pen.
“Did that hurt at all?”
“No.”
“Good. Do you know when you were born?”
“June ninth, 2033,” she said with wonder in her voice. “I have a birthday. Thank you.”
I smiled. This might just work after all. “What would you like your name to be?”
The girl paused, unsure what to say. “Jane? Jane sounds nice, doesn’t it? That’s what they called me at the hospital. Jane Doe. I don’t like the Doe part, but the Jane part is nice.”
“I think Jane sounds great,” I said reassuringly. “What about a last name?”
She drew a blank at that.
I thought of the girl and how tiny she was, how delicate like a little bird. She was a beautiful, little bird.
“Sparrow?” I offered.
“Jane Sparrow,” she repeated. “I like it, like I can fly away.”
I nodded and wrote her new name across her skull.
“Jane Marie Sparrow,” she said when I finished. “That’s my name.”
“It is now,” I said.
“Yes, but after you write it, it feels like it always has been.”
“That’s the way it works. I will make up your history by writing it across your head, down to your neck, and it will spiral around and around part way down your shoulders. That’s about where most stories get to at about your age. Some longer if they’ve lived more, but we are probably going to end yours right about here.”
I touched a part of her back just above her shoulders blades. The now-Jane flinched a little at the unexpected feeling.
“Not my face? Words are not written there?”
“No, not yet at any rate. The face is saved for final thoughts. When you are old and gray, and you die, your last thoughts and wishes are written on your face for your loved ones to see and know. All except your forehead.”
“What’s written on the forehead?”
I chuckled a little. “Just keep your nose clean, and nothing will be written on your forehead.”
Jane sat up suddenly and looked at me seriously. “What gets written on your forehead?”
With a little coaxing, I got her to sip some more elixir and her eyes began to soften again with the fuzzy reality of the drink.
“The forehead is reserved for when you commit one of the majors. Wrath, Gluttony, and the like. Half the lawyers downtown have Greed tattooed on their foreheads and half the whores have Lust. Like I said, keep your nose clean, and you’ll be fine.”
She settled her head in the face cradle, and I got back to work. It was like writing a novel or something. Ideas of a lovely life just came to me. Jane’s parents were Fred and Marie Sparrow. Fred was a science teacher at a high school, and Marie worked at an ad agency. They raised their daughter in San Marcos, where she spent an ideal childhood tubing in the rivers and fishing with her dad. Her favorite Christmas present ever was the year her parents bought her the purple bicycle when she was eight. This, plus her mother’s love of riding, had contributed to Jane’s love of cycling.
“I can see it,” Jane said after I finished writing about the bicycle. “It was so beautiful, and Mom and Dad were so proud that I could ride like I could. They never needed to help me. I had perfect balance. I can remember how the paint of the bike smelled next to the Christmas tree.”
She sipped more elixir, and I pressed onward.
Her first crush and kiss was from a boy in her art class in middle school. He was terribly good, and she was not. His name was Geoffrey, and he stole her little heart by drawing a portrait of her and giving it to her as a Valentine’s present. She kissed him on the cheek behind his mother’s van the day his family moved him away to San Antonio.
Jane sat up after that and stared at me, tears rimming her eyes.
“Why would you make him move away?”
“Honey, it can’t all be perfect. No one would believe it. Besides, nobody stays with their childhood crush. A little heartbreak is good. It teaches you some valuable lessons.”
I felt like a mother imparting valuable wisdom to my little girl. She still stared at me accusingly as a tear ran down her cheek. I hugged her and wrapped the blanket over her shoulders. It was time for a break, so I brought her some ice cream. Jane liked it so much that when I started up again, I made sure to include some great memories of ice cream and orange soda to make up for the Geoffrey part.
Her high school experience was awkward and unremarkable, like most of ours were. She did well in school and really enjoyed her classes. Science was her favorite, since her father had such a love of it. He imparted so much of his wonder onto her, and she ran with it, making the honor role and winning first prize for her science fair experiment in her junior year. He was so proud of her that day. She went to her senior prom with her good friend Andrew just as friends, since Andrew was gay and too afraid to tell anyone but her yet. Jane didn’t care because they had a wonderful time, and no one danced like Andrew could.
I heard her giggle a little at the memory of dancing with Andrew in her light blue gown with sequins along the side. He wore a tuxedo with a bowtie that matched her dress. Jane sipped more elixir as I continued to write her story, but we were getting to her shoulders now, and I was running out of life to write. We were quickly approaching the part I really, really didn’t want to do.
Jane graduated high school with honors, and had applications out to many of the nearby colleges when...
“Jane sit up,” I said seriously.
She did so and looked at me. Confusion covered her face.
“This next part will be bad. I will make it as easy as I can, but it won’t be pretty.”
“W-why? What are you going to do?”
“Drink some more elixir.”
Jane drank without hesitation.
“We have to explain why you are here in Dallas with no one to help you. I made you a lovely life with loving parents, but if they are living, where are they? Why are you alone?”
“I don’t understand.”
“In order for people to accept you and your story, we have to have a reason you are here alone with no connections. I’m afraid that means your parents died.”
Terror filled her eyes, and she grabbed for my shirt. “No. No! Please don’t. I love them. Please don’t kill them. Please!”
She was desperate and clutching me in a panic. These people, these imaginary parents I invented for her, were as real to her as anything.
“Jane, honey, I have to. We can’t have anyone finding out about you or about what we’ve done here. It’s so illegal. You will never be able to live a normal life.”
“I could just pretend they are there. Send letters and pictures to nobody. I could take whole trips to visit them, to keep up appearances.”
She was grasping so very frantically.
“And how long could you keep that up? What if you marry? Have kids? Honey, they aren’t real. One quick scan on a computer will debunk your lie. If they are deceased, no one will ask or care to look.”
“But...”
“Jane, think about it. They are only a memory right now anyway. You can never se
e them. They are already gone.”
The defeat was there in her face. I knew I had won, but I never wanted to win this one. Reason had gotten the better of her, but she didn’t like it. Jane swigged another gulp of elixir to wash down the bitter taste of what was about to happen. Before she put her face in the cradle, she looked up at me pleadingly. That face could’ve melted stone.
“Please, please don’t make it bad. I don’t want them to hurt or suffer. Please?”
“I promise.”
She rested back in place, and I began. Fred and Marie Sparrow were driving back from their daughter’s graduation party in the rain. The road was slick and they had both had a few glasses of champagne. As they relived the beautiful evening they had just had to one another, the car unexpectedly hydroplaned, spinning off of the road and over a bridge. Fred and Marie died on impact, without a moment of fear or pain between them. The last thoughts written on their faces were of their beloved daughter and how proud they were of her.
As soon as my pen ceased, Jane jolted up and collapsed into my arms. Jagged, jerking sobs wracked her body as she clung to me. I sobbed too. I held that little bird thing and cried with her for what seemed like an eternity. We squeezed our bodies together, and wiped tears and snot all over each other. We wailed and we mourned for two imaginary people who had never lived.
When it was over, I brought us tissues and we recovered as well as we could. Deep circles hung under Jane’s eyes as she stared into space, distraught and grief stricken.
“We are almost done.”
She shot a look at me. “There’s more?”
“It’s not bad. Just something to explain why you are here. Then we will be done.”
Jane drank what was left of the elixir and positioned herself for me. I finished her story to date. After her parents’ deaths, she was lost. She spent most of the money they left her surviving for a while and paying the rent on the house. When that was nearly up, she decided she needed to go somewhere completely new and start over. She used most of her money buying a Speed Train ticket to Dallas. A friend knew someone named Dakota there who could help her get settled in the right places. Which brought us to the here and now.
Sighing, I sat back from my handiwork and admired it for a moment while I rubbed ointment on her newly inked life. No one would have been able to tell the difference between the life I wrote for her and any other life the Maker would have written. It was perfect.
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