Stories Beneath Our Skin

by Veronica Sloane

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Stories Beneath Our Skin

  Torquere Press Publishers

  1380 Rio Rancho Blvd #1319

  Rio Rancho, NM 87124

  Copyright 2014 by Veronica Sloane

  Cover illustration by BSClay

  Published with permission

  ISBN: 978-1-61040-677-2

  www.torquerepress.com

  Bronte, Charlotte, and Richard J. Dunn. Jane Eyre. New York: Norton, 2000.

  Ginsberg, Allen. "Song" Collected Poems, 1947-1997. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.

  Ginsberg, Allen. "Sunflower Sutra" Collected Poems, 1947-1997. New York: HarperPerennial, 2007.

  Herrick, Robert. "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d.

  Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Adrian Del Caro. Thus Spoke Zarathustra a Book for All and None. Cambridge: Cambrige Univ., 2006.

  Tennyson, Lord Alfred. "The Kraken." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d.

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address Torquere Press. Inc., 1380 Rio Rancho Blvd #1319, Rio Rancho, NM 87124.

  First Torquere Press Printing: March 2014

  Printed in the USA

  For my parents, who taught me to love language.

  Chapter One

  Great Sin Ink lived in a crumbling excuse of a building, tucked in next to a strip mall on a local main road lined with other soulless strip malls. The last time Liam had seen it, it'd been a faded hardware store with claustrophobic aisles filled with dusty cans of paint. That was years ago though, and someone cared enough about the place now to slap on a coat of paint in a shade of green usually reserved for hospital corridors. The sign, unlit in the waning afternoon sun, looked like it was written in dried blood. Blackout shades kept the outside world at bay, and a classic orange-on-black "Open" sign hung on the door with a handwritten list of hours.

  Night owl hours. The hours Liam desperately needed filled. He rubbed his thumb over the faux leather cover of his flash book, deliberating one last time. If he turned around now, no one would ever know he'd been here. They'd write him off as a flake who ditched an interview, a forgotten resume filed in the trash. He could go back to the dark house, gone cold in the summer heat without the loving presence that had once made it a home.

  Liam wrapped his hand around the door handle and pushed inside.

  The scent in the air sucker-punched him with memory. There was a tattoo gun in his hand, his fingers thinner and shaking as they needled a black line over a practice pig skin. A stronger, broader hand curved over his, paired with the sharp nip of a kiss on the back of his neck. In a paralyzing instant, he was sixteen and vulnerable all over again. This dive looked nothing like the slick operation where he'd first learned the trade, but that smell that he could never describe -- some amalgam of latex, disinfectant, churning air conditioner, and ointment -- dragged him straight back to that bruised and bloodied place.

  An electronic chime announced his entrance into Great Sin. It was barely audible over the heavy bass of music coming from deep inside the shop, but loud enough to shake him out of the sticky morass of memory. The waiting room was small, blocked off from the rest of the store by a black plywood wall and a thick red curtain. Frames hung on every blank surface in a gallery of tattoos. A bright splash of color right in the middle caught his eye, and he stepped around the sagging couch to get a closer look.

  The piece was incredible, an intricate tangle of knotwork around the point of an elbow. It took him the last few steady breaths back into the present moment. He had no idea what it symbolized, but he knew he wanted to meet the artist with that light of a hand and such bottomless patience.

  "Can I help you?"

  Liam started, turning around to discover a woman with a buzz cut dyed a brilliant magenta. Her bodybuilder biceps were tempered with a field of roses on the right and an enigmatic chubby Buddha on the left.

  "Sorry." She held out her hand. "I'm Deb. You walked right past the desk."

  "Liam." He shook her hand, trying not to wince when she put the pressure on. "I called about maybe getting some table hours?"

  "Thought it might be you." She made a show of giving him a once over. "Don't really look the part, do you?"

  "I've been out of the business for a bit." He knew he shouldn't have settled on his usual uniform of pressed khakis and crisp polo shirt. With his dark sweep of neatly parted hair, lanky frame, and clean-shaven baby face, he knew he looked more like someone who should be folding sweaters at the Gap than a tattoo artist. "Is that going to be a problem?"

  "Not my call. I keep the books, do some piercing, and schedule appointments. Which, I should warn you, we haven't had many of recently." She sank back into the chair behind the desk. "Kids go home from the state college over the summer, and there goes half our customers. Picks up again in fall."

  "You said on the phone there were hours available."

  He could've screamed. Now that he'd gotten himself inside and the sickness had faded, he badly wanted to stay. Even without Brandon's guiding hand, maybe especially without, Liam had been a good artist and passionate about the work. This was the only parlor in a twenty-mile radius. If he couldn't get time here, it was going to have to be some weird warehouse gig with not enough to occupy his cluttered, rattling head.

  "I said there might be." She shrugged. "Again, not up to me."

  "Then who's it up to?"

  "That'd be Ace." The shoes she put up on the desk matched her hair. "He owns this incredible palace."

  "Are you trash talking me already?" A man's voice came through the curtain, the music taking a sharp plunge in volume. "Shit, Deb. It's not even three in the afternoon. We agreed you'd wait 'til midnight to start in on me."

  "Glad to see you noticed the time." She rolled her eyes heavenward in silent supplication. "Your three o'clock interview is here."

  "You know, as my secretary, you're supposed to tell me these things." The curtain moved aside. "What interview?"

  "The only interview you have this month? Artist with the crap resume who you wanted to see 'cause you liked the paper it was printed on, ya weirdo."

  "It wasn't the paper." The man, Ace presumably, stepped through the curtain.

  At six foot three, Liam often found himself describing people as short. Yet even for him, Ace was remarkably small, barely coming up to Liam's shoulder. Good thing then that Ace had clearly set out to make his height the very last thing people would notice about him. Instead, they would take in the shaved sides of his head and the twisting blond dreads that ran down the center of his skull held together with a brown cord. Or they might notice the piercings: labret, septum, three tiny silver rings through his left eyebrow, and an elegant twist of bone shot through the cartilage of his right ear. His petite stature would be the very last thing anyone observed.

  Except for Liam apparently. He always did miss the big picture in favor of meaningless detail. Or was it the other way around?

  "Like the hardware?" Ace had the faint remnants of an accent, too lilting to be English. Maybe Irish. It wasn't quite like anything Liam had heard before.

  "The bone." Liam blurted. "That real?"

  "Sure. Genuine buffalo, if you can believe the advertising." Ace reached out a hand. "Let me see."

  "See what?"

  "That's your boo
k, right?" Ace waggled his fingers impatiently. "Gimmie."

  "Why buffalo?" He handed it over, trying not to let the roiling in his stomach show in his face.

  "Who the hell knows? I just liked the shape of it."

  The book flipped open in Ace's hands, and he studied each page with care. There was nothing special on the laminated pages: dragons, hearts, and crosses in a half-dozen guises. It could be any flash book in any shop. Liam hadn't been in the business long enough to build up a good portfolio. If his resume hadn't given that away, then his flash book surely did. It was a little like letting someone poke around his bedroom when there were dirty clothes strewn on the floor.

  To keep from fidgeting, Liam went back to staring at Ace. Despite all the skin Liam could see, there wasn't much artwork on display -- a bit of indecipherable writing that peeked out from the collar of his t-shirt, a snake's body winding out of his left sleeve, and a sword carved into his right forearm, drawing three thick drops of blood where the point of the blade met the wrist. Between the frayed edges of his cut-offs and the top of tight-laced black boots, Liam could just make out matching green bands wrapped around strong thighs. Celtic knotwork, he guessed. Maybe it continued upwards. He could imagine a rich spiral climbing vine-like toward an unknown heaven.

  "Okay, so you know how to do what drunk frat boys want." Ace snapped the book shut, and Liam brought his attention back front and center. "What about that thing on your resume?"

  "What thing?"

  "The thing." Ace made a vague motion.

  "He means that doodle next to your limited work experience." Deb drawled.

  "Yeah. That."

  "Oh." Liam sank his hands into his pockets. "It's an old fashioned gaslight. It's sort of a pun on my last name. Lamplighter."

  "Not really a pun, sort of more an illustration, isn't it?" Ace snapped his fingers at Deb. "Do we still have it?"

  "A please wouldn't kill you." She pulled the sheet from a pile on her desk and waved the familiar heavy paper at Ace.

  "Please and thank you and sorry, ma'am." He took the resume from her, glancing over it. "See, this I like. Why don't you have this in your book?"

  "Never had anyone ask for it." Liam shifted on the balls of his feet. "It's something I came up with after I stopped working."

  "And you stopped because?"

  "College." Liam said, just like he'd practiced in the mirror. He thought he carried it off a breezy nonchalance. The downward tilt of Ace's mouth told him otherwise. "Look, I know I don't have a lot of experience. I just... need some hours."

  "This is a small place. Me, Deb, and Goose. Even if I give you time and a table, I can't guarantee work. There's bigger shops in the city that would probably take you at a cut rate commission price, and you'd still make more money than you'll get here."

  "Are you trying to run me off or offer me a job? 'Cause I'm getting some mixed signals." Liam folded his arms over his chest. "I don't care what I can find in the city. You're local, and that's what I need."

  "Okay, okay! Relax. Just a little weird that's all." Ace tapped the gaslight. "You don't have a drop of ink or a piercing. I gotta ask why. Sort of like a nun signing up for work in a cathouse."

  "Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean I don't have it."

  "Show me." Ace demanded. Liam glanced over at Deb, who looked supremely bored, flipping through a magazine. Did Ace demand new employees to strip so often that it had become routine to her? "Come on, man. I don't have all day."

  "Yeah, he's got an appointment at seven." Deb licked a fingertip and stuck it to a magazine page. "Busy man."

  "For the love of Christ, Deb." Ace groaned. "Let me maintain a little mystery."

  "The only thing mysterious about you is why you think you're mysterious."

  "I'll have you know that I am a goddamn man of international fucking mystery."

  "Yeah, you're a regular James Bond. You going to show us your ink, kid?" She asked, not entirely unkindly. "We could go on like this for a while if you don't."

  Liam tried to look casual as he hiked his pants up a little higher to hide the mess of old pain scrawled over his stomach. When he was sure nothing would show, he hooked his fingers under his shirt and drew it up over his head. The air conditioning washed over him, raising goosebumps over every inch of his skin in the span of a breath. Despite the flaws of the man that inked it, Liam still loved the intricacies of the mechanical heart etched above his living one from the straining bolts to the steam blowing up to his collarbone. The cog nipple ring finished the steampunk look nicely.

  "Who designed this?" Ace didn't quite reach out, but Liam saw his fingers twitch like they had when he reached for the flash book.

  "I did. The artist added a few details."

  "Why isn't it in your book?"

  "'Cause I didn't do the work." Liam clutched at his shirt, sweat gathering in his palms.

  "Is there more?"

  Reluctantly he turned, exposing the extensive work down his spine. It had been his first piece, not yet legal and heady on the misdemeanor of it. The jagged rip of a design clawed through skin to show the bone, sinew and rot he had once imagined lurked under the surface. The drawing had flown off his fingers as if in a trance, and he still wasn't sure if he loved or hated the damn thing.

  "That's some kind of detail. Must've taken a ton of hours." Ace's voice was too close. "Is that... is there something in there? Fuck, there is. Are those eyes? Is that a squid?"

  "A kraken. Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep. The Kraken sleepeth," Liam recited in easy sweet lines as he pulled his shirt back down. When he turned, Ace was still standing too close.

  "Should I know that from somewhere?" Ace lifted an eyebrow as if it was Liam invading his space.

  "Um, probably not? It's from a Tennyson poem I liked at the time."

  "Huh."

  "Satisfied with the merchandise?" Liam asked impatiently.

  "Prickly. You're gonna have to loosen up if you're working here. Or toughen up. Your choice."

  Ace tilted up his chin. His eyes were too delicate for the rest of him, cornflower blue with long light lashes. Whatever alpha male persona he was trying on, his eyes couldn't back it up. "We charge $100 an hour, more for special requests. Shop takes sixty percent. We're busiest on Fridays and Saturdays -- that's when most of our walk-ins show up -- so I'll want you then. Everything else we'll figure out by appointment. I don't allow drugs or booze in the shop. You smoke?"

  "Not for years." Though Liam did miss the comforting ritual of the struck match and flare of light, he'd never enjoyed the burn of smoke in his lungs.

  "For the best, all of us quit a few years ago so you'd be alone anyway. If you do fall off the wagon, smoke in the back and toss your butts away. Keeping up personal hygiene is a must. Hand washing, all that good stuff. I run a very clean shop, never had an infection picked up here, and I'm not about to start now. If you fuck up once, I accept apologies in the form of rhyming groveling. Twice and you're out on your ass. Questions?"

  "When can I start?"

  A smile twitched at the edges of Ace's mouth. Approval, maybe. Liam raised his chin a fraction higher.

  "Eager. Nice. Soon as possible would work for me."

  "Need to run through some paperwork first." Deb waved a clipboard at him.

  "Come back tomorrow night around six, so you can get familiar with the place before prime time." A quick slap on the arm caught Liam off guard. "Welcome aboard."

  With that, Ace was gone, disappearing back through the curtain and leaving behind the faint smell of peppermint. Liam tugged at the hem of his shirt, setting the seams straight over his shoulders.

  "That's the strangest job interview I've ever had," he remarked. "And the shortest."

  "He's a sucker for a sad story." Deb held the clipboard out again. "W-2 and basically what he said, except in legalese."

  "I didn't tell him a story."

  "Kid, no one gets work done like that 'cau
se their life is sunshine and flowers. Especially if they cover it up."

  "I'm not a kid." He took the forms, sinking into a waiting room chair to fill it out. "I'm twenty-two."

  "That makes you a kid to me." She rummaged in her desk and pulled out a fluorescent yellow bottle of nail polish. "Leave those on the desk when you're done."

  The music cranked back up as he dotted i's and crossed t's. Deb didn't look up when he set the clipboard down an inch away from her drying nails, so he muttered his goodbyes and escaped into the humid afternoon air. The heavy beat followed him out across the broken asphalt and into his car. The air conditioning rattled to life, pumping out lukewarm air as he pulled away from the shop.

  From there, it was only a fifteen-minute drive to St. Francis. It wasn't as close as Liam would like to be, but it was the best he'd get. The facility was Great Sin's polar opposite with its gentle pastels and soft elevator music. Gretchen in reception smiled at him as he came in, a strand of hair coming loose from her harried bun.

  "How are you today?" She asked as he signed the visitor's log.

  "M'okay." He dredged up a smile for her. "How's by you?"

  "Can't complain." Her scrubs were patterned with roses. She had a different flower set for every day of the week. Liam liked the Tuesday daisies the best. "They restocked the vending machine this morning. I asked them for extra root beer."

  "Thanks." His smile softened into something a little more believable.

  "No problem. Say hi to him for me."

  "Will do."

  Down the sweetly pink hallway, the pretense of happy hospital care gave way to the somber reality. No amount of pastels could hide what went on between these walls. St. Francis was a hospice, playing genteel host to guests slowly going about the business of dying. Liam waved at a few other visitors that he recognized. They pooled together at odd hours in the solemn waiting rooms, not talking, but taking comfort that they weren't alone in preemptive grief. Liam avoided them for the most part, preferring to leave his melancholy to fester on its own. Room 15-B's door was open, a good sign. Liam slipped inside.

  The thinning ghost of Liam's Uncle Gene lay prone on the starched hospital bed. Someone had folded the sheets neatly down to expose gowned shoulders. They were hunched, frail wings of bone under industrial cotton. Once, not so long ago, they'd been broad enough to carry Liam's entire world with room left for every neighborhood stray. The second he spotted Liam, Gene lit up, and the illusion of returned health flushed his cheeks. Liam couldn't help but smile broadly in reply.