Meet Ash Harker

Next morning, Ash stood under the shower for ten minutes, cleaning the grime of days from her body. Two large tattoos covered the backs of her legs, three-dimensional zips rising from her ankles to her knees, seemingly opened half-way down her calves to reveal in trompe-l’oeil perfection layers of skin down to bone. On September 30th, the day momma died, she hitched a ride into Richmond because there were no tattoo parlors in Berea and, besides, Richmond was the only town in Madison County licenced to sell alcohol. She lay on her stomach and reached for the tumbler of bourbon and winced at its sourness. She looked at her prone reflection in the mirror and hated herself. She was an outsider, an aberration.

“You sure you wanna do this?” the tattooist said.

“I said already.”

He drew the design she had given him on each leg in turn and wiped her skin with cleaning solution. The smell reminded Ash of the hospital she had walked out of three hours earlier. She closed her eyes. Jes’ start. Make it hurt. Sorer’n hell. What he thought, this guy, was that he was tattooing a design onto Ash’s skin. Ash knew otherwise. She knew he was bringing to the surface what was already there. What it is is an excavation. Into me, Ash Harker, whoever she is. Inside her was a pseudomorphic hole that once housed her true self but now was filled by an alien presence, something Ash neither recognised nor trusted nor liked. Tattoos would bring it to the surface. She already knew that by the time she was forty she would be tattooed neck to toe, every centimetre of her body covered except her heart. That would remain untouched, untouchable. And each tattoo would represent a defect inside her and the pain she inflicted on everyone around her. They would be her mark.

She turned the water temperature up until she could scarcely bear it. She leaned her head against the wall beneath the shower head and felt the water massage the base of her skull. The almost-pain of it thrilled her.