“How does that feel, not too much of a sting? This part of the body can get sensitive after a while.”
   “It’s fine, thanks. No problems.”
   “Cool. Just let me know if it starts to sting any and we’ll take a breather.”
   The girl lying flat on the couch before Daniel Lorenz nodded slowly and relaxed into the sensation of the needle as it tapped across the skin of her spine, sighing as it once again tinted her skin with fresh, bright colours.
   Today’s work had so far taken seven hours, and would keep Daniel busy for another five at least. The next two days would be the same, with another day spent touching up any blemishes. It had to be perfect. All of his body art had to be exact, but this work, the tapestry he now worked at, had to be his finest piece ever. He couldn’t fail himself again.
   “So,” the girl, Maria, asked as he concentrated on a lower portion of her spine,
   “ ‘You think we’ll win this year? I mean, this has gotta be the best piece of work you’ve done so far, right. Blow all them other contenders out the water, back to the kiddie’s pool where they belong.”
   “Yeah, this is gonna be my finest piece. I’m sure to win.”
   He hoped so. No, he begged it to be true. He couldn’t suffer the humiliation of coming fourth place. Again.
   “But you gotta admit, fourth best tattooist in the world is one hell of an achievement. Many would kill for such a title,” she giggled.
   Daniel found no amusement in her words. He dug the needle a fraction deeper than proper and smiled secretively as she winced.
   “Yeah. Fourth place, every year for the last five: Gotta be proud of that, right?”
   She stayed quiet, sensing his aggravation.
   Fourth place, his mind raged, what trophy represented that achievement? If there was gold, silver, and bronze, what reward came with fourth place - copper, tin, fucking plastic? He grit his teeth as was his habit when he got mad and pressed down once more with the needle.
   “Ow! ‘Getting a little sensitive down there now, Daniel. Can we take a break for a minute?”
   Served her right for bringing up his pet hate: No, if this loathing had been a pet, he’d have had it drowned.
   “Sure, no problem. It’s not like time is against us, eh? Just lie still and I’ll get you a god-damned gown.”
   The competition was in five days. Less than a week to finish - perfect - this masterpiece that had obsessed him since the results of last year’s competition had been announced. Once again, he’d been deprived of his golden goal.
   The Japanese always won, the Chinese artists coming in second, then came that bastard from New York, that ‘Sharp’ fellow. Sure, they were all masters but he was better, he knew it in his soul that he could out ink every one of them. To be on the covers of the magazines, not just the trade publications, but also the high street monthlies and the fashion glossies – that was his dream; that, the twenty thousand dollar prize money, and the all expenses paid world tour. Such status would have the punters crawling in, begging to have him so much a scratch them with his golden needles.
   This year he’d win. This year he’d wow them with his skills. He’d show them who was the world’s master artist.

After inhaling a cigarette and swilling away the after-scent of nicotine with mouthwash, the way he always did, he returned to Maria and continued his work.

Three hours later and she’d had enough. He could tell by the way she kept fidgeting, twitching when the needle was expertly applied to the folds of her back, and silently tutting when it nipped her skin. If he didn’t stop, she’d start jiggling about and that would spell disaster. There was nothing for it; he’d have to call it a day.
   Reluctantly, Daniel swabbed his art with professional care, gently dabbing the slightest traces of blood from her broken skin. He then applied several large patches to cover his work, keeping it hygienic and free from infection.
   “Okay, Maria, that’s all for the day. Can you come in at eight thirty tomorrow instead of nine? I wanna get an early start.”
   She shook her head as she rose from the couch, her long black locks bobbing as she did so. “No can do, honey. I gotta drop the kid of at school, so there’s no way I’ll be back before –
   “Maria, when you agreed to be by model, you accepted that we’d be working long hours. If you’re having second thoughts, now’s a month too fucking late to be telling me.”
   She stared back at him with her brown eyes revealing her surprise at this blow to her dedication. “Hey, I gotta get the kid to school, I told you that months ago. There was no problem then. Don’t take your apprehension at facing Yamamoto out on me, Daniel. It’s not fair, and it sure ain’t helping the pain.”
   “Pain? I’m like a fucking surgeon when I create. You’re blessed to be my model, girl. You should be paying me, not the other way round!” “And as for that pretender Yamamoto, he can go back to Japan with his needles rammed up his fat ass for all I care!”
   Maria was tired, suffering under a throbbing spine, and had her Porte Rican blood scabbing across her back. She bit. Hard. “Hey, fella, that Japanese guy’s blown you away the last five years. If you spent a little less time shouting at me and more time concentrating on not ripping the skin off my back, maybe you’d be in with a chance of winning. Some hope you got –
   His slap came from nowhere. She span, hit the floor, but was back up faster than Daniel could’ve anticipated. Her fist was as strong as her tongue and brought the taste of blood to his mouth. “Fuck your competition, looser!”
   Seeing her grab her clothes and turn to leave, Daniel was literally slapped out of his self-defeatist mood swing and back on the clock. His model, his art, was walking out the door taking all chances of victory with her. “Maria, wait! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…”
   But she was at the door, pulling it open and snarling at him as he followed her.
   “Touch me again and my brothers will bury you so deep, even the worms won’t find you.” She then cursed him in a tongue he couldn’t understand, and stepped into the street, a thin gown her only defence against the staring eyes of passers by.
   “But the competition!” Daniel cried after her.
   “Find someone else to slash up, you amateur. I’ll get this botch job finished downtown by some drunk biker. No one will notice the difference!”
   “You fucking whore!” he spat, but she was climbing into her car and flipping him a middle finger as she went.
   As he watched the vehicle speed off down the road, he cursed and stormed back into his studio, slamming the door behind him.
   He was screwed.

Sleep didn’t come easily that night.
   When it finally blessed him, to silence the rage in his head, Daniel’s dreams were of needles and ink. He botched every pore he coloured. The ink was too thick, too thin, too dim – nothing worked. He cut flesh and stabbed into muscles the way an amateur hack would do, scribbling his work with thick, useless fingers. His clients screamed, his fellow artists laughed and jeered, mocking him with cruel words. He was a looser.
   A trophy was presented to him by hideous creatures, whose faces had been cut and pierced with barbed fishing hooks and savage studs no fetishist would dare decorate their body with. They beamed at him with decaying teeth as they thrust the prize into his unsteady hands – ‘Worst Artistic Catastrophe’ the blood-smeared plaque read.
   He woke covered in sweat, and wept.

On returning to his studio, he found that a package had been delivered to the door. It sat on the pavement outside, the mailman unable to fit the thick envelope through the letterbox.
   Picking it up, he scanned the envelope for a postmark – he could find none, not even a stamp. “Must’ve been hand delivered,” he grumbled to himself.
   He took the package inside and threw it onto the coffee table that sat in the front of his studio, knocking one of the many thick volumes of designs that rested there to the floor. He ignored it, and went to make himself fresh coffee.
   He had a hard day ahead of him. He’d have to phone all of his contacts, all of his regulars, in the hope of finding someone willing to undertake the gruelling task of spending the next few days under his needle. There would be no time to sleep, little time for food, the client would have to be totally dedicated to his cause. He rolled his eyes; there would be no way anyone would be able to endure such torturous hours. He himself would be hard pressed to remain concentrated for so many hours of intense labour. Maybe, just maybe, he could call in one of his previous clients and add more work to an already existing tattoo. It was strictly against the rules to do such a thing, but who would know? It was his only hope.
   His hopes were dashed within the hour.
   After making thirty calls, buttering up and flattering those he spoke to, he still had no model, no client willing to undergo the days of work that would be necessary for him to stand any chance of winning this year. Even his regulars, with the promise of unlimited free body art for them and their friends, failed to answer the challenge.
   He slammed the receiver into its cradle after crossing off the last name on his list and kicked the phone across the floor. He wouldn’t be able to raise his head in the body art world again. They’d laugh at him, just like in his dream. He was a looser.
   Three cigarettes later, and Daniel was going for the door. His foot found the portfolio that had fallen from the coffee table that morning, and he stooped to pick it up. He then remembered the package.
   It was probably a set of boring fliers from tattoo magazines, or subscription offers to the magazines that filled the bookshelf in the corner of the studio’s entrance - meaningless junk now. He’d dreamed of seeing his face on their covers rather than hidden away inside, lost in the background of other artist’s glory. That dream would never be realised, not now, not without an entry to display at this year’s legendary competition.
   He snatched up the envelope and was about to toss it into the dustbin, when something heavy slid about inside. It tapped against the packaging, hard and solid. What was it?
   Intrigued, Daniel ripped open the envelope open and spilled the contents onto the coffee table.
   The first item that met his gaze was a yellowed sheet of paper. He picked it up and stared at the words upon it. It wasn’t, as he’d hoped, some explanation as to who had sent him the package, but was instead a set of instructions. They detailed the precise method one should use to imprint the body with the most fantastic of tattoos, designs, the paper boasted, that would grant the artist great renown.
   He grunted and flicked the paper to the table. ‘Who could tell him something he didn’t already know about body art?’ No one.
   Reaching to collect the rest of the package and throw it out with the trash, he sighted another item in the envelope’s depths. He fished the object out.
   It was a curious tattoo pattern. Curious because, unlike other designs which were printed onto thin tracing paper, this was a negative, like a stencil one would use to spray paint the body rather than ink over using a needle. The design was made from a thin, leathery fabric that had an odd, shiny texture. He handled it and brought it up to examine it closer. It smelt old.
   The tattoo’s pattern was an intricate cube of lines and dashes that twisted this way and that, reminding him of a black and white surrealist painting he’d once seen. The lines crossed each other in complex configurations that made his eyes water such were their outlandish beauty. Yes, it was beautiful: Strange, certainly unique, but none the less a fascinating piece of art that longed to make a home on willing flesh.
   He marvelled for a long while at the design before him.
   He would be the fortunate soul to wear this art, he decided. His skin would feel this web of lines and circles forever mark his body. If, he hoped, the work was as good as it promised, he may be able to enter himself as his entry this year. There was nothing in the rulebook that forbade that.
   Yes, he would do it, and he would do it now.

Charging back into the workshop area of his studio with newfound zeal, he set out the yellowed paper that held the instructions and read them thoroughly. They made little practical sense. The paper advised that the tattooing be carried out in a strict manner, that performing the inking in any other way would result in a substandard design that would not strike the observer in the least. The template was to be copied so: any deviation from the instructions would mean artistic disaster. It would take Daniel three times as long to complete the work if he obeyed.
   Odd requests, but not worth concerning himself with: he’d heed the instructions and give himself a tattoo worth celebrating. After all, he had nothing to loose.

Seven hours later and the design was complete.
   There had been minor problems with the process. He’d chosen his stomach as the place to perform his work, as it was the most accessible to a solo artist working on himself, but it had proven difficult to ink the intricacies of the configuration with his stomach creasing as he bent to apply the needle. Yet he’d persisted.
   Setting the strange stencil over his skin, he noticed the way it felt and smelt made his flesh crawl. It seemed to glue itself to his flesh, which did make staying in the pattern’s complicated lines easier, but often stung – what was the adhesive? When fingering the template before application, it’d not felt tacky in the slightest. Perhaps it was a new type of body adhesive, one that heated up and gelled after prolonged contact with the skin? It was probably a Japanese invention.
   Next, the process had been almost intolerably long. Obeying the wishes of the paper’s nameless author had taken its toll on both Daniel’s patience and his resolve. But obey he had, down to the last dot of ink he’d applied that evening.
   After spending the best of yesterday wasting his time on that ungrateful slag, Marie, and a bad night’s sleep following that, he was now too exhausted to drive home. He decided to bed down on the work couch for the next few hours until the sun rose.
   Sleep came, and then dreams.
   Tonight, Daniel dreamt that he was in New York, visiting the home of that bronze-medal-winning shit Sharp. He stood besides his bed, parading his new work - unique, exquisite - before his stunned competitor, displaying its marvellous complexities in all their striking glory.
   Sharp had laughed at the work. But only for a moment.
   Lorenz’s stomach had rippled. It burned, a long series of painful twitches exploding across the flesh that sent him sprawling onto his back, gyrating on the floor in silent agony.
   A tear had opened in his guts. Blood washed from his body to spill across the floor of Sharp’s room in a wave that lapped about his fear-numbed feet. The blood gushed forth in thick floods, and, when Daniel thought he could take no more, his mouth gaping in a silent scream, the red gushed and merged before him.
   It congealed into thick blobs that piled at his feet, rising up on itself, rolling and frothing in sickening shimmers of crimson until it had taken shape: a human form.
   The figure was bathed in blood, but, with a hand’s simple gesture, tossed the coat of wetness aside as if brushing away rainwater.
   The man, for it was a male that stood before him, was garbed in black leather robes that trailed down his body. Long cuts had been torn into the fabric, these holes revealing viscous scars that seeped fresh blood.
   But this was not what brought a whimper of dread to Daniel’s throat, or the gag of terror from Sharp. His head: it had been shaved bald and, in place of hair, there stood nails. Long, glittering spikes had been hammered into his skull in perfect ranks. The man smiled a set of blackened teeth; he felt no pain from those nails, or if he did, found nothing but satisfaction from the agony they brought.
   It turned and stared down at Daniel. When it spoke, its tones were serious and filled with authority.
   “The designs. You have opened the gates. Now you must pay the toll.”
He pointed to Sharp who lay delirious on the floor. “Take him down.”
The figure reached into the folds of his gown and brought forth a vicious-looking fishhook. He presented it to Daniel and nodded.
   Daniel slunk back. He couldn’t, wouldn’t do what the thing demanded. It was murder that he wished for – there was no way…
   “Then it is you who pay the tax.”
   A hooked chain swung down from the darkness and ripped into the skin of his cheek. It pulled, dragging Daniel to his feet. He screamed as he felt blood dribble into his mouth and down his throat. “Please! No!” he gargled through searing pain.
   The figure pointed to the shaking form of Sharp; then handed him the fishhook. “Go, create.”
   Daniel approached the cowering Sharp and raised the weapon high.
After the first few lashes, he lost all sense of himself with only the wet tap, tap, tap of blood as it splattered against his features dragging him back to this terrible dream.

   “A dream. That’s all it was.” Daniel sat shaking on the edge of the work couch, his feet pulled tightly against his chest. “One hell of a nightmare…”
   He went to the small bathroom at the rear of the studio and rinsed his face. He felt better. Stretching to click the annoying aches in his spine that were common after long hours of tattooing, he glanced at his new acquisition in the mirror. It looked good. No: it looked spectacular. When he unveiled it at the competition, it would… Wait. What was that on his back?
   There were fresh lines of ink curling under the edges of his ribcage.
   He span round and gazed over his shoulder into the mirror.
   His back was home to the most magnificent piece of art he’d ever seen. Not just body art, but the finest work he’d ever witnessed in any artistic medium. A dozen faces stared back at him in photographic excellence, their every feature rendered exactly. The faces were suffering for certain - they were as haunting as any photographs of torture victims - but the detail, the depth of the ink, the highlights and contours – indescribably perfect.
   It seemed the eyes stared back as if begging for him to help them. The cuts in their flesh gaped in red tones he could only imagine creating, the sheen over the hooks… Hooks: He remembered the dream once more. That man. How he’d watched as Lorenz had hacked Sharp to ribbons. But that had been a dream, right?
   His shaking fingers stabbed at the numbers on his phone as he dialled Sharp’s studio number. After a while, a voice answered.
   “Sharp’s tattoos. How can I help?”
   “Yeah…it’s Lorenz. I wanna talk to Sharp.”
   There was a long silence from the phone, and then the voice spoke with deep sadness.
   “I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, Daniel, but Sharp is dead. He was murdered in his home last night. Crazy bastard hacked up his body and stole his…they think the killer took his skin. God, it’s horrible. I’m so sorry.”
   Daniel dropped the phone. He barely made it to the bathroom in time.

He was not a drinker, but today he found himself slipping out of the back door to buy a large bottle of whisky from a neighbouring off license.
   After securing the front door and placing the ‘closed’ sign in full view, he drew the long curtain that separated the entrance room from his work area and slumped into a chair. Soon the bottle was half gone, as was he.
   His mind soared at what had happened to Sharp. Butchered, in his home, just as he’d dreamed he’d done. Could Lorenz have actually done the deed…? Impossible. Sharp lived in New York City, Lorenz in Boston: the journey was difficult to make when one actually wanted to take it, never mind sleepwalking. No, there was another answer. There had to be.
   Perhaps he’d dreamt of the killer? That was it: the man with nails in his head was responsible, Lorenz had simply witnessed the act in dream.
   He moved to the phone, the police would have to be informed… Foolish. He’d be doped up to the eyes and drooling in a straightjacket by the end of the day.
   He swigged down another mouthful of whisky and snarled at the heat of it.
He wasn’t thinking straight. He was suffering from shock. Sharp had been a competitor, sure, but he’d also been a professional colleague. He was disturbed by his death, that was all, and rightfully so.
   Maybe if he closed his eyes, just for a few minutes, to help him clear his head…

The Chinese man’s face had been a picture of total amusement when he’d stared at Daniel Lorenz’s new tattoo. They’d met before, at the World Festival of Tattoo Art, and had never thought much of the man’s work. But this thing on his chest – this made all his other efforts seem like priceless treasures.
This was what Lorenz faced when he found himself standing in the Chinese man’s studio, thick clouds of dream-fog wafting about his feet: ridicule; Cold, heartless scorn.
   “It’s unique, not some clichéd design stolen from a shoddy men’s magazine, you pretender!” Daniel had raged. “What do you know of art, you stupid old man!”
   Fires of rage had burned in his chest sending pangs of heat soaring through his guts. The skin of his belly wrinkled and flowed, and a face pressed tightly against the skin. Nails stabbed at his flesh there and jabbed for freedom from the skeletal jail of his ribs. He felt the tattoo on his stomach tighten, stretch, and then his skin was splitting wide open.
   Blood flowed in rivers.
   Once again, it lapped at his prone body’s feet. Once more did that grotesque figure form from his red release.
   “No, no, not again. Please, I beg you…”
   “As well you should. But prayers are insufficient payment.”
   He pointed to the Chinaman, Lorenz’s competitor from the East: he was suspended by a maze of razor wire and twisted in a jig of agony.
   “No. I won’t.” Lorenz snapped. “You can’t make me –
   The wound, where in the dream before a hook had bit, now bled again, stinging with the bitter reminder of the creature’s mastery over pain.
   The dark figure handed Lorenz a set of oxidized pliers and a cutthroat razor, and nodded for him to begin.

Lorenz woke on the floor of his workroom in a pool of his own vomit. His head crashed under the force of a monstrous hangover and as he went to stand, he felt his legs give, the room swaying violently about him. He was sick, again.
   A while passed with Lorenz drooling on the floor.
   His phone rang into life next to his head and he winced under its din. “Who…who is it? What do you want?” he croaked.
   The voice at the other end was polite and said nothing about the manner in which he’d answered his business’ telephone. “Mr. Daniel Lorenz? I’m Lucy Blackwell from the W. F. T. A., the World Festival of Tattoo Art. I’m sorry to bother you like this, but I’ve got some terribly bad news…”

The Chinese man was dead; No, not just dead, slaughtered. She’d not given him many details, didn’t know the specifics she said, but he could tell from the tone of her voice that it had been a gory murder. He’d bet his hands that a pair of pliers and a razor had been employed in creating the massacre.
   He felt dirty. He felt sick. He needed to lie in a hot bath for a week and scrub off the filth he felt was covering his body. The thought of his form made him recoil.
   Quickly, he ran to the backroom and snatched off his top – still the fabulous new art was there on his back, the cubic design adorning his stomach. But now there was more.
   He saw it tickling the top of his bellybutton in the thinnest of lines. He dropped his trousers. He screamed.
   His legs were tattooed completely. Covering every square inch of his skin below the waist, even his penis and scrotum, was a scene straight from Hell. Bodies were tugged apart, limbs hacked with rusty blades, women were raped by the foulest, direst of creatures as men were disembowelled by sharp tools. He kicked back in a lost attempt to throw the design from his skin.
   Screaming, he dragged up his trousers and ran through the workroom, out of his studio, and fled down the street.
   His mind was racing, he’d done those things to the Chinese man, to Sharp: he was a murderer! He didn’t know how it was possible, Christ, it wasn’t possible, but it’d happened none the less. In some crazy way, he’d killed them and had received these strange tattoos as prizes. He had to turn himself in, now. He didn’t care that he’d be locked away in an institution and probably never see the light of day again, he had to do everything he could to prevent himself from killing again!
   Running like a madman, he dashed out across the road…and into the path of a coming car.

This time, the nail-headed creature simply burst from his guts in a shower of blood that splattered the face of the man Lorenz stood before. The man wiped a shower of blood from his terrified, oriental eyes, and raised his hands in dumbfounded protest.
   “Run!” Lorenz screamed at the man, but Yamamoto’s feet had been pegged to the floor.
   “Oh, Christ, no! Please, please, not again! Leave me alone, for God’s sake!”
   The creature hissed in displeasure.
   “Take me instead. Just don’t let me hurt anyone else.” Lorenz pleaded. He fell to his knees and wept into his palms.
   Cold steel touched the back of his hands. He opened his eyes and saw the creature snarling down at him, a long, serrated knife offered out for Lorenz to take.
   “Do what you want to me. I won’t murder again. Never again.”
   “Fool. Do you think you have any say in this now, so late in the game? Come…”
   Lorenz was yanked to his feet by unseen hands that gripped his limbs in steely embraces. They shuffled his body closer to Yamamoto, Lorenz’s feet resisting all the way. Invisible fingers worked his, forcing them to grasp the cold steel of a blade.
   “No! No! NO!!”
   But it was all for nought.
   The fingers brought the blade to stab deep into Yamamoto’s guts, and then twisted, yanking at the filling within. A gash opened up and the Japanese man’s innards spilled out onto the floor with a wet slap, hot steam rising to trail about Lorenz’s nose.
   “Please, no more…” he begged.
   Again and again his hands worked with the blade, each stab deeper than the last, each slash of its serrated edge more savage then before, until all that remained of the Japanese artist was a crimson hunk of dishevelled bone and tissue that sat glistening in Lorenz’s eyes.
   “Why…? Why are you doing this to me?” he asked.
   “You performed the sacred ballet of ink over flesh. We simply answered that call.” the creature replied. “Now, see what a magnificent work of art you’ve become…”
   Lorenz looked down at his naked body and gasped. The art that he’d applied to his stomach was twitching. It turned, the designs shifting and spreading. It rolled across his chest – twisted, and opened. As the circles rotated in his flesh, the art spread like a rash to cover his body in Hell’s ink. Arms, legs, back, torso, and face were now covered in one giant tapestry. A thousand lost souls were tortured in a piece of art that crawled with life. Tears fell from their inked eyes to spill across his back, and long, sorrowful screams sounded out from the lips in his chest. The struggling chorus was horrifying.
   “Worthy of hanging…” the creature continued.
   As its words rang through the room, strings of hook-tipped chains lashed out and fastened themselves to Lorenz’s hands and feet, his eyelids, and the nape of his neck. A huge blade scored the length of his spine with careful precision. He was thrust into a cruciform and…tugged.
   There as a long wet ripping sound and Lorenz felt something moist slip from his body – his skeleton. It dropped into the darkness that now crawled through the room and fell away, rich cuisine for the hounds of Hell.
   Though there was no longer a bone in his body, nor a nerve left with which to sense, his torture did not end there.
   “God…let it stop…”
   “Oh, no,” the creature demanded, “it is God that wishes this. God that awaits its private viewing...”
   The room’s walls collapsed like sheets of melting ice, and bricks and mortar slipped into depthless dark. A siren sounded – deafening and deep; the howl of Hell’s dark God: Leviathan.
   Lorenz’s flattened form was suspended high, to soar before the face of the gargantuan revolving shape as it called out its desolation cry.
   As its black beams of sorrow rushed over his skin, the dark God’s gaze examining this new addition to its gallery of pain, Daniel Lorenz wished he had eyes with which to weep.