Ink

by Jonathan Maberry

  Their kisses continued while that hand rested there, unmoving. Gayle was almost afraid to break the spell. She had come this far, dared this much, but was she really ready to go further?

  Dianna hooked a finger in the collar of her robe and pulled it open so that Gayle’s hand now touched her bare skin.

  “Yes,” murmured Dianna. She leaned over and kissed the soft flesh below Gayle’s ear. It sent an electric thrill through Gayle’s whole body. Once upon a time Scott used to kiss her like that. In some other century, in some other life. Dianna’s kisses were quick, with small bites.

  Gayle continued to caress Dianna’s breasts and, try as she might, she could not help comparing this woman’s body to her own. It was maddening. Dianna had larger breasts and her nipples were paler, pinker, with smaller areoles. The flesh was shaped differently and the surface rippled with each of Dianna’s deepening breaths. It was surreal, because Gayle kept expecting her own breast, her own nipple, to feel what she was doing to Dianna. As if this were her touching herself.

  She realized, too, that she was tensing for the moment of pounce—when Scott would climb on top and use his knees to part her thighs, spreading her for penetration. Her body had become conditioned to that as the inevitable next stage.

  But Dianna lay there and kissed her.

  And soon Dianna’s hands began caressing her. She found all the places that sent electric thrills through Gayle, but it was alien. Just as she had been struck at how different it felt to kiss another woman, or to hold one in her arms in a passionate embrace, it was equally strange to be touched by one. There was a gentleness that was in no way weakness. There was a knowingness in each caress. Dianna doing to her what she knew felt good to a woman because she was a woman.

  When Dianna went down on her, it was absolutely beautiful and Gayle nearly broke into tears. Her body writhed like a snake, and she gasped when Dianna slid a finger inside while her tongue flicked and danced.

  It was nearly perfect.

  Nearly.

  But not.

  And the fault, Gayle knew, was in no way Dianna’s.

  This was so different. Much different than she expected, much different than she dreamed about. Despite all of the wonderful, beautiful things this lovely woman did, she was unable to fully relax. There was a gradual rise toward climax, but the orgasm eluded her. And after a while both of them knew it. Gayle almost—almost—faked an orgasm, but did not. It would be an ugly thing to do. A lie in the midst of discovering truths.

  When she went down on Dianna it was beautiful and delicious, and for a while Gayle was completely lost in it. Doing to Dianna what the woman had done to her. Dianna’s orgasm, when it came, was intense. She turned her mouth and bit a pillow and screamed, her hips bucking as Gayle fought to hold on, to maintain contact so as not to spoil the orgasm before it ran its course.

  Afterward they kissed again. And touched. And went down on each other again. Gayle did not come. Dianna did, but it took more effort. Maybe because second orgasms often do, or maybe it was because of the burden placed on the moment by Gayle’s inability to come at all.

  Eventually it was just sweetness and quiet. Neither of them saying much at all. Listening to the rain. Dianna held Gayle tenderly against her breast, stroking her hair and her back and occasionally kissing the top of her head.

  The only words spoken throughout their time in that big bed were said as Gayle was getting up to get dressed to go home. Dianna watched her rise and put on the blue robe, but before it was belted, she said, “You are beautiful.”

  That made Gayle cry and she wheeled and fled to the guest bedroom where her clothes waited. Where another version of Gayle waited to be put on like a garment and worn for the ride home.

  78

  Monk left the bar well before midnight, feeling too much stout and whiskey sloshing around in his gut, and too many ghosts in his head. But what he’d learned at the bar kept him on the icy side of sober. The story Andrew Duncan told him scared the piss out of Monk.

  Another missing tattoo? Another set of memories gone?

  He stood in the rainy darkness and shivered. Not from the cold but from bad thoughts and shapeless uncertainty. He’d been in Pine Deep less than two days and already knew the place was wrong, but wrong how was beyond his understanding. A sound pulled him from that thought and he looked up to see the nightbirds clustered together on the rooftop of the vape shop across the street, looking like refugees at a closed border. It was too dark to see their eyes, but he could feel the weight of their stares. He wondered, not for the first time, if they could see the ghosts around him. Real ghosts, not just the bad thoughts in Monk’s head. Those spirits were always there. They traveled with him. Some of them screamed at him all through the day, all through the night. Mostly at night. He could see them, hear them, feel their various degrees of coldness all the time. A little less so when he was hammered, as he was now.

  Could these birds see them, too?

  As if in answer, one of the nightbirds cawed softly. It was such a sad, lonely, lost sound that it came close to breaking his heart.

  Were these things even birds at all? Or, he wondered, were they as lost as the ghosts who haunted him? The birds rustled but gave no other cries, and for a moment all of the souls around Monk fell silent as a wet storm breeze blew past. He turned into the wind. Far down the street, along the edges of the coming storm, the night was thickening like a chest filling with air. Monk shifted his stance, widening his legs, balancing his weight onto the balls of his feet as if bracing for a wave. Or a punch.

  But the wind blew wet and long and did not attack.

  Monk closed his eyes and blessed the night, aching to set the ghosts free, to unchain his own longing and let it flutter like a piece of torn cloth on the breeze. He wanted to find the end of night and place his many hurts on the altar of dawn and be forgiven for all the harm he had ever caused. Especially the deeper injuries inflicted every time he tried to do good in the world. The GPS of his good intentions was faulty and there was no road map through this landscape. Not in this half of his life.

  “Help me, mister.”

  The words came from behind him and Monk whirled.

  The street was empty except for parked cars. No one walking. No one anywhere in sight. He walked a few paces to change his perspective, but there was nothing. He heard the words as an echo in his mind.

  Help me.

  The voice was female. Young. And … familiar?

  Monk fought to place it. Not Patty’s voice. No, this was a girl.

  “Is someone there?” he called, his right hand touching the zipper of his leather jacket. He could unzip and draw his gun in a heartbeat. He’d done it many times.

  There was no answer and his words died in the damp air.

  Monk took a few careful steps in the direction of where he thought the voice came from.

  Nothing.

  There was a sudden sharp pain in his chest. Not deep, though. Not his heart. This was on the surface of his skin. Like a scrape or cut. It was intense, but fleeting. There and gone.

  “That fuck…?” he asked the night.

  The nightbirds rustled nervously on the rooftop.

  “If you’re playing some kind of joke, kid,” Monk called, “then you’re making a bad choice. Trust me on this.”

  “Please, mister … help me.”

  Once more it sounded like it came from behind him and once more he spun, this time pulling the heavy automatic. He raised it into a two-hand shooter’s grip, finger laid ready along the trigger, but there was no one to threaten. The clouds began spitting at him.

  Help me.

  This time the echo felt very close, like a damp whisper in his ear, clammy as the grave. The pain flared once more in his chest. Monk shifted the pistol to his left hand and let it hang at his side. With his right he rubbed the spot on his chest. Beneath the fabric of his sweatshirt he could feel the tattoo. One of many faces he wore. It seemed to ripple and writhe, as if the inked mouth
was trying to open. To scream.

  Or … to whisper.

  Please, mister, help me.

  The drizzle turned to rain and Monk Addison stood there, touching his chest, knowing that it was the voice of a girl long dead who spoke to him. Who begged for help.

  He pulled down the neck of the sweatshirt, yanking it, tearing it so he could see the face, just to the left of his sternum. He knew the name of every face on his skin. Each name, each life, each death.

  “Angie,” he breathed.

  The rain fell on the face of Angela Bailey. Fifteen. Raped and murdered eleven years ago. Dismembered and left like garbage in a dozen public trash cans. Angela. Angie.

  Hers was the third face Patty had inked onto him and the eleventh face overall. Sweet little Angie. Torn to pieces and thrown away.

  He stared at her face.

  Her dead eyes were open.

  Her dead lips moved

  Help me, she screamed.

  But it was not Angela Bailey’s voice. Looking into her eyes, he knew that. She was screaming, but hers were not the screams that filled the air around him. No, those were made by another voice. Younger. With a heavy accent. Or … speaking in another language.

  He touched Angela’s face and then the bare spot next to her. There was no tattoo there.

  Except there was.

  There should be.

  He pressed his fingers into his skin, scrabbled at a mark, a swirl of muted colors that faded even as he looked at it. Eluding his attempt to hold onto the memory of it.

  Whose face had it been? He fought to remember. A name was almost there. Almost. Not Angela. Whose?

  The rain ran down his chest and smeared the remnant tattoo, washing away the features, washing away the name.

  And the memories.

  He watched in total horror as the tattoo faded from his sight, from his experience, from his mind. Disappearing.

  Monk spun, looking for her ghost among the crowd that surrounded him.

  “Đừng để cô ấy quên tôi!”

  Those words filled the air and each one hit Monk in the chest.

  Don’t let her forget me.

  “Little girl!” he roared, calling her that because all traces of the name were gone. Not a first letter, or the number of syllables. Nothing.

  He strained to hear her in the wet darkness around him, but now even her ghostly voice was gone.

  What was her name?

  What did she look like?

  He spun wildly, counting specters, but there were no ghosts missing from his entourage. He looked down again, straining to see that spot on his chest. Directly over his heart. There should be a tattoo there. There had been one. An old one. One of the first of that kind he ever got, or … maybe the first.

  “Đừng để cô ấy quên tôi!”

  The words made the bare spot throb with pain. Not sharp. Dull, like a bruise fading to nothing.

  “Don’t let who forget you?” he yelled. He staggered toward the nearest car and squatted to see his chest in the sideview mirror. The skin looked unmarked. Only a faint blur, like some of the other places on his body where he’d had old military tattoos lasered off.

  There was no face in that spot on his chest.

  There was no …

  Monk stood in the rain, touching a dead spot on his chest. An empty spot. A place that connected his thoughts to no one. He waited for the voice to speak, but it was totally gone now. He sagged against the car as a sob broke from deep in his chest.

  The pistol fell from his left hand and clattered on the concrete.

  Around him, the other ghosts screamed. All of them. Every single ghost screamed. And he did, too.

  79

  The rain was steady but not aggressive. Gayle drove away from Dianna’s house, turned at the corner, went two blocks along the street, and then pulled over.

  It was one of those residential streets without sidewalks or lights, with two homes on one side and a public park on the other. One house was totally dark and the other had a single light in an upstairs room. The light was a pale blue that flickered. Someone watching TV in bed.

  Gayle left the engine running but turned off the lights and wipers, then sat with her hands resting on the upper curve of the wheel. Remembering. Cataloging all of the details of what had just happened. And the consequences.

  She had just had sex with a woman. Her mind resisted calling it lovemaking because that came with heavy baggage.

  She and Dianna had shared intimacy in a way Gayle had not since she’d first married Scott. No, that was wrong. In a way she had never experienced.

  It was good. It felt right, but it also felt wrong.

  The right parts—and some were truly right for her—were right because of the freedom. The moments that had allowed her to be entirely herself. No lies, no false fronts. The fact that she hadn’t completely opened up was separate and personal. That was all about her fear and awkwardness, not because the door was shut and locked. It was too new and too strange for her to have relaxed enough to completely enjoy the experience. She hadn’t had an orgasm. Not that Dianna hadn’t tried. The woman had skills. But Gayle had been more nervous tonight than when she’d lost her virginity in her senior year of high school. Back then, the conventions she had been sold as “right and normal” provided a framework so that all she and the guy in question had to worry about were contraception and basic mechanics.

  Not tonight. The world had gotten a good deal larger tonight. More so than she anticipated when she began looking for a “first date” with a woman. More so than when she and Carrie swapped carefully worded notes of passion and a few pictures. Carrie had been freer than Gayle, her photos and notes more explicit. Maybe if they’d followed through to have a night together it would have had more of the safety net of familiarity. Maybe Gayle would have been a better lover and been more fully receptive. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

  Had Dianna’s orgasm even been real? Or had she thrown Gayle a pity fake of the kind she herself gifted Scott with when it seemed like he was really trying? On those rare occasions.

  Lightning flashed and Gayle flinched. Somehow the flinch and the starkness of the light made her think of home. Of Scott and the kids. Of what he would say if he ever found out. Of what he would do.

  Yes, he had originally agreed to let her go on a date.

  No, he had never agreed to Gayle sleeping with another woman.

  Yes, he had wanted a threesome with another woman.

  No, he did not want to share her. Not really. Not when it became clear that her desire to spend time with another woman had nothing at all to do with him, and that he would never be invited into that new connection.

  What would he do if he found out?

  There would be yelling. That was certain.

  What else would happen? Scott would be hurt, betrayed, afraid. Would it drive him away? Would he go straight to a divorce lawyer?

  Did she want that?

  “No,” she said aloud.

  No. But … why? Sex with Scott was nothing. Rough, dehumanizing. She was a receptacle for his sperm. She was breasts and a vagina. She was a cook and a paycheck and child care. She cleaned the house and was a good hostess. But was she even a person to him anymore? Did her needs, her wants, her reality, truly register with him? If not, why?

  If not … what next?

  The rain seemed to soften, to whisper along the street and wash, rather than pummel, the windshield.

  Gayle thought about Dianna’s tattoos. Before they got out of bed, when the frequency had shifted completely away from sex, they’d discussed a number of things. Dianna’s job reading cards and providing spiritual guidance using her gifts of sensitivity and intuition. They also talked about Dianna’s tattoos. The pride rainbow was the oldest of the woman’s skin art, and the most obvious. On her left ankle was a small labrys, the double-sided ax associated with the goddess of the hunt, Artemis, and the harvest goddess, Demeter. A symbol of enduring female strength and independence;
a severing of the connection to—and need for—male strength and protection. On Dianna’s right ankle was a small black triangle, which had originally been used by the concentration camp Nazis to mark certain female prisoners known for arbeitssc¬heu—antisocial behavior that included feminism, prostitution, and lesbianism. And, along Dianna’s spine, from the coccyx to the top of the thorax, were the phases of the moon. Dianna explained how the tattoo artist, Patty Cakes, scolded her about that because exploring her lesbianism was not a phase of her life but a defining quality.

  “Maybe I should get that one,” said Gayle. “I think I’m still more straight than anything.”

  “Yeah,” said Dianna diffidently, “or maybe wait to see what happens. You might surprise yourself.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Gayle, and Dianna didn’t push it.

  The last of Dianna’s tattoos was one on the inside of her forearm—a green vine from which roses budded and bloomed. But that one looked old and pale, faded to faintness.

  “What’s that one for?” asked Gayle, and for a moment the other woman just looked blank. Then she frowned and shrugged.

  “It’s nothing. I kind of forget why I even got it.”

  Gayle touched her arm, running her fingers along the smooth, pale skin. Touching each faded rose. “The roses look withered. Was that intentional?”

  Dianna shook her head. “I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

  Now, sitting in her car, she touched her own arm. Imagining more there. Imagining art there.

  Imagining meaning there.