by Maura H. Harrison
For months after her sister died, Rita was determined to keep her mourning ever present. She wanted the pain to be ever sharp, ever piercing, ever gouging her heart with the barbs of godless cruelty she now believed the world to be. She wanted to stare death in the face, absorbing its bitter sting, so that it could never surprise her again. She wanted to punish herself for living while her sister’s body, buried, went to bone.
Her thoughts entertained many things morose and morbid. She thought about wearing a pinching circlet around her waist. She searched for spiked bracelets and piercing barrettes. She placed sharp rocks in her shoes and thought about cutting herself in different places and in different ways. She craved an ugly scar, something hideous and monstrous that she could tend to each day. Rita hoped for a wound that would be puffy and inflamed so that she could probe the pain and conquer the suffering.
Once, she tried to make a cut, but much to her dismay found that some small Quiet seemed to stay her hand, allowing her only a scratch. Discouraged, and still in search of something dramatic, her thoughts finally snagged on the idea of getting a tattoo. This path seemed to address all of her desires. There’d be pain, initial discomfort, bleeding, scabbing. And it would be permanent. With the right image, she could confront the grotesque every day. It would be something that couldn’t be taken from her.
***
“Uhh… I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” said JJ. He looked at Rita and shook his head. “I mean,” he ventured, “you’ve never been inked anywhere, and what you are asking for is crazy painful.”
Rita drew her frown into a hornet scowl. “Look, I know. I know. I’ve done my research. Getting something on the palm of your hand is going to be painful. I get it. It’s all bone, no flesh. But I’m determined. This means something.”
“Of course it means something, it always means something. But really, come on, how about getting the skull somewhere else? You know, on your shoulder maybe. I mean, really, it’ll just work better somewhere else. Also, sometimes the palms don’t hold ink very well.”
“No. It’s got to be on the palm of my hand. I want the skull in my hand. I want to be holding it. Gripping it.”
JJ did not want to tattoo the palm of this lady’s hand. She was the strangest client he had ever worked with. She was so plain and proper looking, and yet she wanted something so angry and ugly. And while he didn’t quite understand her, he knew she would not be satisfied with a skull on the palm of her hand. He considered Rita a moment and ran through all of their previous conversations before deciding on a tactic. “On your forearm, I can go larger, which means I can go with much more detail.”
The hornets around Rita’s scowl seemed to freeze for a moment and then started to drift away. Yes, he thought, this was the right approach. “With more detail, we can go with a design that is more…” He sought the right word. “Arresting. You know, something hyper-realistic. I’m thinking something along the lines of those old Gray’s Anatomy illustrations—you know, eye sockets, nasal cavities, teeth, skull plates.” He paused and let the image haunt Rita’s mind. “And, you know, there’s also a thing called black-light ink. It only shows up under UV light. We could work that into the design too. A kind of secret message. Now that would be cool.”
Rita didn’t want to change her plan, but a new obsession was forming. “Oh,” she said, her eyes rising and sweeping the ceiling as if searching for a pattern, “a secret message?”
Rita’s scowl was gone, and in its place the start of a smile began entertaining a little no-see-um. JJ sighed and was relieved.
Three eight-hour sessions came and went and delivered all the pain and hurting and burning and stinging that Rita had hoped for. She enjoyed the bleeding, the seeping of plasma, and the scary way her skin looked red, angry, and bruised.
Rita looked at her forearm and smiled at the design that she and JJ had finally devised. While looking for images, she had stumbled on a picture of a 17th-century plague panel, a painting of a skull and crossbones—lower jaw missing, upper two middle teeth gone—wearing a wreath of laurel leaves. It was a sign doctors placed on the outside of a house to warn against the plague, but also a dire proclamation: the triumph of death.
In her tattoo, the skull—also missing its mandible and upper middle teeth—had the look of a fanged creature. Its lateral incisors and canines were biting into a stack of books. But in Rita’s design, death’s triumph was denied. The laurel wreath was torn apart; leaves stuffed into the eye sockets. Some leaves were in the nasal cavities, some tucked as bookmarks in between the pages of the books. The bones beneath the skull were uncrossed.
And with the black-light ink, titles marked the spines: Veni, Vidi, Vici: Mors Ergo Nihil Est Mihi: Hinc Nullae Lacrimae: I Came, I Saw, I Conquered: Death Is Nothing to Me: Hence No Tears.
I am an open wound now, she thought. But soon I’ll be a scar.
***
No tears, no tears, thought Rita as she rubbed more lotion into the skull on her forearm. She pulled out a UV flashlight and started examining the skull, the books, and the bones—her new favorite pastime. In addition to the book titles, the black light also revealed a couple of flies hovering near the eye sockets and lighting on the laurel. Initially, Rita thought JJ was wasting his time—and hers—on embellishing the tattoo, but now that her skin was healed and the image clear, she had grown to appreciate the pesky little insects flitting about the sockets. In the black light, the glowing ink had the uncanny effect of seeming to illuminate the skull’s interior, like candlelight flicked around on the inside of a pumpkin. JJ had been amused by the flies and their illumination.
“It goes with your fancy book titles,” he said. “When I was looking for skull images, I kept coming across these words: in ictu oculi—in the blink of an eye.”
Rita frowned. “That’s not what I mean to say. My pain will not be fleeting. I’m pinning it down like a desiccated specimen.”
“I know, but it goes along with what you were saying about denying death its victory. They’re flies! Death itself is dead and rotting! And”—JJ said, getting excited— “they will only show up in black light! It’s brilliant.”
Rita pinched her mouth and considered the idea for a few minutes. “Okay,” she said. “You can add the flies.”
***
Rita sighed. It had been an exhausting day. Climbing into bed, she felt for the UV flashlight in the pocket of her sweatpants. Once settled, she took it out, turned it on, and swept the light across her forearm. The skull, ever at work consuming the stack of books, looked like it was wincing. “Well, Biter, no victory for you,” she gloated. She turned the light off and closed her eyes but kept the light in her hand knowing she’d need to check on Biter a few more times before falling asleep.
In the dark, she took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. It was mental preparation for what she now did every night. Instead of an examination of conscience, it had become an examination of memory, a stirring up of all of her happy recollections about her sister so that she could continue to feel the gravity of her absence. And as it always did, the absence grew into a sharp lance and its probing tip worked its way around the hole in her heart. Yes, she thought, the pain is still expanding.
Suddenly, a physical pain stung Rita’s forearm and her whole body involuntarily flinched. She opened her eyes wide and froze, listening to the sounds of her bedroom. She reached for the flashlight, turned it on, and flooded her arm with light. The skull, its teeth still chomping on the books, was swarmed with triple the number of its normal flies. Rita blinked several times and concentrated the light on the skull. Sure enough, the flies had multiplied. The stinging pain was now a burning agony, so she pressed hard on her skin to try to contain it. After a few moments, she peeked again at the skull. She could hardly believe or understand what she was seeing. There, amongst the influx of flies, was an angry hornet, stinger engaged with the top of the skull. The burning pain she was feeling was radiating from this location.
What the heck, Rita thought and pressed hard on her forearm again. The pain was excruciating. If she had been standing up, she would have fallen to her knees. Instead, she could sense that she was about to pass out. She closed her eyes and let herself fall into nothingness.
***
After a time, Rita became slowly aware of a persistent din. In the dark, the noise was muddy and thick, a slurry of muffled conversations. As she listened, she noticed that the murmurs were punctuated by shrieks. Low moans lurched into sobs. Small whimpers boiled into screams. Whines wound up into wails. She felt trapped in a cacophony of sound that made it impossible to think. She pressed her fingers to her ears to block out the sound. With the sound partially deadened, she began to feel the noise in her bones and in her breath. Reverberations trembled her heart and she felt diminished like a sound wave moving away from its source. Deprived of sight, she imagined she was a lonely sparrow singing from a rooftop, a quiet voice lost in the midst of tremendous noise. And then slowly, she found that all of the shrieks and sobs and screams and wails were coming from her. She was a monstrous pelican screaming in the silent wilderness.
***
“Peli, Peli, come on, wake up now, honey. Can you hear me?” Daphne leaned in close and lifted one of Rita’s eyelids with her left hand and held Rita’s forearm with her other hand. “Hello? You in there, Peli dear?”
Rita was instantly wide awake. Her eyes darted around the room. She recognized her bedroom, her houseplants, the paintings on the wall, her rust-colored floral curtains. But the woman before her? The woman touching her? Who was this woman, who—with her extra-thick, black-framed glasses, her extra-large pink hair curlers, and her chartreuse headscarf—looked like a creepy Southern stereotype? “Who the heck are you? What…”
Rita made a move to sit up, but Daphne tisked, “Oh Peli, I don’t think you want to do that. Please do lie still, Peli dear.”
A wave of nausea convinced Rita to lay back and close her eyes. She tried to reconstruct the events of the last day, but understanding and clarity remained hidden from her. The only stable image that came to mind was that of a gigantic, lumbering, feathered beast squawking loudly and pecking at its breast. The metallic smell of blood filled her nose, and the taste of iron filled her mouth. “I think I’m going to be sick,” Rita managed.
“Yes, Peli dear. I know, I know. Do you think you can make it to the bathroom or do you want to be sick right here? I’ve got a bucket.”
“The bathroom. I want to get to the bathroom.”
“Yes, Peli dear, let’s get you to a better place.”
Daphne pulled the bedding away and helped Rita sit up. Rita, seeing her flashlight in the sheets, grabbed it and slid it into the pocket of her sweatpants. They got to the bathroom quickly and Rita stumbled in and shut the door, leaving the far-sighted hair-curlered woman in the hallway. She lifted the toilet lid, fell to her knees, and drooled a bit into the toilet. Discomfort in her arm brought back the memory of the hornet and the flies. She looked at Biter and his stack of books. All looked as she remembered. Standing up, she fetched her flashlight, turned off the bathroom light, and turned the UV light on.
She gasped and had to squint and avert her gaze. The skull was ablaze with flies. The hornet lay curled on its side near the bottom of the books.
There was a knock at the door. “Peli dear, are you okay? Are you looking at the skull? Did you peek with your torch? Don’t worry about the hornet. I flicked him from the skull. Peli? Can you hear me? He’ll be okay. Please, dear, open the door.”
Rita clicked off her flashlight and opened the door a few inches. Peering out, she saw the woman’s magnified eyes floating before her like two enormous orbs, each in its own fishbowl. “Who are you?” asked Rita suspiciously. “What do you know about the hornet?”
Daphne inhaled deeply and then—like wind moving its way through a grove of trees—a flurry of words burst forth. “Well, really, Peli dear, I know quite a bit. I know about your fascination with the plague panel. I know about the flies. I know that a photon is both a bullet-like particle and a rippling wave until you measure it. I know that your sister died almost two months ago and that it was an accident.”
As she spoke, Daphne adjusted her glasses and patted her head, checking for loose curlers. “I know that Apollo really did regret pursuing me so ardently. I know you saw yourself as a sparrow but ended up screaming like a pelican. I know, Peli dear, that I’ve been asked to place a gift in the midst of your wilderness. So, you see, I do know things. I know that, contrary to your tattooed books, you haven’t conquered a thing, death actually does mean something to you, and that you do have tears.”
Rita blinked and then closed the bathroom door. Her mind was stirred with ideas and questions. How could someone know so many intimate details about her? Again, she opened the door a few inches and asked, “And the hornet?”
“Oh yes, Brother Hornet. That was all my fault. He was only supposed to be a little flourish. But really, Peli dear, I had no idea he would sting you. I am truly sorry for that.”
Rita closed the door again, sighed, and then again opened the door. “And who are you? Who sent you? What is this gift you’re talking about?”
“Oh Peli dear, don’t you think we could stop playing bathroom peek-a-boo? Come out and let’s have a cup of tea.” Daphne turned away from the bathroom and started to move down the hallway, her footsteps cracking with the sound of autumn leaves. “Peli dear, follow me.”
Rita, slightly light-headed, found herself pushed down the hallway by a gentle breeze until she found herself seated at the kitchen table. She was struck again by the thickness of the lady’s glasses. She must be almost blind, Rita thought. “Please, who are you?”
Daphne bowed a bit, gave some of her curlers a little pat, and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Peli dear. My name is Daphne.” She said no more, like the sudden silence of the woods when the wind has moved elsewhere.
“How do you know so much about me?”
Daphne whispered, “Common truths, my dear, common truths. Don’t be afraid—know that I’m a friend from a friend.” More silence.
“And this ‘gift’ you are supposed to place in my ‘wilderness’—what’s that about?”
Daphne grew stiff and gnarled and knotted. She leaned across the table and her fishbowl eyes, which were inches from Rita’s face, were focused on something far away. When she spoke, her words barked: “Peli: you: are: wrong!” And then, in a lower hissing growl: “Memento moriendum esse: remember that you must die. Embrace your Sister Death.” Then, limber again in limbs, Daphne relaxed, sat back in her chair, and patted her curlers and smoothed her headscarf.
Daphne’s words were like a slap with a switch. Rita moved toward the back of her chair and pushed away from the table a few inches. She was aware again of the hornet in her tattoo and she rubbed her forearm.
Both ladies were silent. After a moment, Daphne said, “Sorry, Peli dear. What was your question?”
Now suspicious and on guard, Rita affected as neutral a voice as possible. “You mentioned a gift?”
“Ah yes, the gift. It’s an idea, a fullness, an ordered movement of words and chords. It’s a canticle of bees and hornets and stings and honey. Being in the wilderness is the best place to be for such a song.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” said Rita flatly. She looked down at Biter and the books, fly-less in the daylight. For a moment, the light and shadows in the room seemed to suggest that the skull was in a garden of sunflowers.
“It’s an exhortation, Peli dear, to look about, order your sorrows, and hope for honey. Maybe it’s not a question of pain or sorrow. Maybe it’s love and mercy. There it is. That’s the gift.” Daphne stood up, reached across the table, and touched Rita’s tattoo.
“And so, Peli dear—Rita—take a careful measurement.” Daphne walked to the front door and looked back. “And yes, I am taking all my laurel leaves with me.” And in her own kind of flourish, she was gone.
Maura H. Harrison is a writer and artist from Fredericksburg, VA. Her works have appeared with Ekstatis Magazine, The Windhover, THINK Journal, and others.