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“You’re allergic,” Paulie tells me, running his finger around the braised red skin up my neck. “This happened before, and it’s worse this time.”
I turn back to the mirror, pulling my collar down further, straining to follow the inflamed trail that encircles my throat.
“Allergic to what?” I ask. “The ink?”
“Probably. It happens. More common with red than black, but still.”
Continue reading “Lanternalia by Will Pinhey”
Glen sat in the corner booth of the Hollywood Diner and stared out one of the windows that separated the gray and red walls. He was delighted with the cool autumn day. It was one of those dark and gray days he loved being in the city despite the light drizzle that had been falling most of the morning. He held a cup of coffee to his lips and took pleasure in the richness and the warmth. On the cigarette-burned, graffiti-scarred table next to a half-eaten pastrami on rye his drawing pad was opened and waiting.
This is without a shadow of a doubt the most disgusting, pig sty of a tattoo shop I have ever had the displeasure of visiting. It’s in the bathroom of an abandoned Shell station about ten miles off Highway 99 just south of Fresno. It reeks of urine and feces and is littered with used condoms and equally used sanitary napkins.
The walls are smeared with what looks like dried feces and graffiti written in the same substance. I hold my breath as I address the two thin, bearded white men in immaculate white doctor jackets with name tags reading, Alphonse and Dupree. Despite the doctor jackets, they are somewhat lacking in bedside manner.
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