he tattoo comes alive in your dreams. The roses dart off the Medusa-head of the knife and fly at you. You are frozen as the roseblades slice through your clothes, teasing your hot flesh with their pinpricks. You lie beneath the blue-eyed entity in the darkness as your mutilated clothes disintegrate. Faggot, he says. You fucking faggot. The knife rams your ass, holy and searing, until you are reshaped in its form. In his blue eyes you are his tattoo, swaddled in roses. You wake up in a cold sweat with a guilty hard-on and roll away from Richard’s sleeping form.

 

Oringally published in Skin & Ink.

 

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