The Fold-O-Rama Wars at the Blue Moon Roach Hotel and Other Colorful Tales of Transformation and Tattoos. A. R. Morlan
slightly raised moles for his tattoo. Since he’d been a toddler when he’d gotten it, barely more than a baby, it might have faded, or spread out as he’d grown—
—that it was blue didn’t help much; most of his submerged veins were also a watery blue.
But she knew that it would be parallel to his forearm, running in a single line of numbers. The pictures on the Internet had shown her that much. Just as they’d shown her other tattoos, in other colors and patterns—
Those images she pushed from her mind, as she continued to search for his tattoo...the one he hadn’t asked for, given by people who’d forced him to get it. It seemed like they were routinely put on the left arm...there. Under a myriad of veins, liver spots, old scars, and crinkly darkish hair. A series of numbers, faint, spread, bleached to a delicate shade of baby-blue by decades of exposure to sunlight.
It would have been fairly easy to remove with a laser, even though blue (along with yellow) was a difficult color to obliterate entirely with laser light, since it was so old and faded to being with. That was what she wanted to ask him about, why he didn’t have it taken off. Or cut out of his skin, then stitch together the gaping ends. This was not the sort of tattoo one would want to keep...but, as she held his cooling arm in her hands, she remembered how she considered herself part of a tribe, and realized that she wouldn’t need to have that question answered, after all.
For a few brutally clear moments, she simply stood in Mr. B.’s room, taking in his world as he’d lived it for the last she didn’t know how many years: Nubby orange drapes, fronting a window whose panes were swirled with old dust and unknown fingerprints. Peachy-pale walls, decorated only with a freebie calendar from the local savings-and-loan and a pair of framed prints of enlarged gladiola blossoms. Bedside table in faux dark wood. Plastic-upholstered chair, with tapering round legs. Well-worn linoleum flooring. A small bathroom off the right side of the bed. Not a ghetto, but not a place for a human being, either.
In a place like that, one would need to hang onto anything which reminded one of his or her basic humanity. Even if it was a reminder of a less-than-human designation....
With a rubber-kneed jolt, she’d reached the subtropolis. As the elevator doors slid open, the silver-walled coolness inherent in the native limestone walls and ceiling cocooned her within her abaya. In the distance, she was only slightly aware of the people milling around outside the many units beyond the elevator, some huddled around tables like café patrons in France, smoking and talking over coffee, others driving those little golf-cart-like put-puts, all of them making noise, even as none of the sounds really reached her.
Within the twenty miles worth of tunnels and storage units before her was the huge unit (big-enough-to-have-its-own-ZIP-code-huge) which housed the flash-scraps for the eastern part of the United States. All hermetically-sealed within special glass plates, and stored within a climate-controlled environment. Rows upon rows of surgically-removed flash: Whole Irezumi body tattoos, spread out hunting-trophy style; individual sections of skin, embellished with greywork portraiture so finely rendered it resembled pen-and-ink work on parchment; examples of virtually every cartoon character ever inked on a body part—including licensed characters doing things their creators never intended them to do; celebrity tattoos; a few examples of medical tattoos (breast reconstructions, radiation-therapy dots)...and an entire block’s worth of wall-mounted flash defined as “Unclassified.” Things inked on bodies whose meaning was only known to the wearer...words, names, images indefinable.
Gwynn had personally carried dozens of pieces to the storage unit, and she had tiny renderings of each bit of flash done in miniature on her own forearm. “Buncha little thoughts” Mr. B. had called them.
She hadn’t had time to think before she’d harvested his tattoo; luckily, there was a pair of small scissors in the bathroom, for cutting bandages. Technically, she’d had to stab his arm, then keep cutting, thankful that a non-beating heart pumps no blood. She didn’t want to look at what the arm looked like, after she’d peeled away the tattoo; she’d bandaged it sloppily, just enough to cover the wound she’d left. Let the person who officially found him think he’d had some procedure done. She didn’t plan to be around for them to ask her about it; Mr. Beniamino had been right. She wasn’t here because she wanted to be, she only stayed because no one else would have her. Because of her skin, because of her choices.
Because no other nurse would be able to look at those faded, wrinkled, sagging bodies whose former designs now melted into their epidermis, distorted by age and gravity into something akin to a badly-fitting leotard, rather than once-beautiful, once proud bodies. Like that woman down the hall, whose entire body was a series of garments, a pair of jeans, a purple- and brown-spotted shirt, even the pattern of socks on her feet. Never quite naked, even as she was never clothed enough.
But from now on, some other nursing assistant would have to look at them. Appreciate them, maybe.
Moving purposefully down an often-trod corridor, her black robe hazily reflected in the silver-painted walls, Gwynn headed for the Flesh-Vault, as it was properly known, and as she walked, those images from the Shoah website returned to her...those lampshades made of a man’s chest-flesh, the pattern preserved in taut, well-lit perfection. And other chunks of tattooed flesh, hacked out, and kept for the enjoyment of camp guards. One of their wives collected flash. Somehow, somewhen, people had forgotten that, though. How, Gwynn wasn’t sure, but somehow, the whole concept of taking a tattoo off a body and keeping it became acceptable, advantageous. True, these were voluntary donations, but how was that different from involuntary donations...some made for the sake of harvesting the tattoo, period?
They’re too beautiful to put in the ground, too beautiful to burn. Couldn’t you say that about the whole body, too?
There was a flypaper doormat before the entrance to the Flesh-Vault, and reflexively Gwynn slid her feet across it, before palming open the door pad. The man who worked as the main attendant, who had renamed himself Agnimukha, an East Indian word for “face of fire” in honor of his full-face tongues of flame tattoo, looked up from his security monitor, and said, “Forget the cooler on the bus?”
Pulling off the abaya with a quick rustle of scratchy black cotton, and leaving her hair in a flattened mass on her forehead, Gwynn shook her head, before ripping the packet of flash-scrap off her belly with a moist snick of duct-tape parting quickly from her hot flesh.
“Whoa...contraband flash. Cool. Haven’t seen any of that in months—”
“File this under ‘Historical’...here’s the fee.”
She placed the packet on the counter, and unfolded the surrounding foil. In the colorless overhead lights, the narrow sliver of flesh was wholly unlike any flash-scrap she’d ever seen before. Legally harvested flash was shaved clean, supple, neatly cut around the edges. Even Agnimukha was silenced by the sight of that ribbon of lightly-haired flesh, lying vulnerable and pale on the reflective foil. The numbers were barely legible, and sloppily applied. Gwynn didn’t want to think about how young Mayir Beniamino had to have squirmed and fought as they were applied. Finally, Agnimukha picked the flash up by the foil and started to carry it toward the back of the unit, where the people who processed and mounted the tattoos between glass worked. Gwynn had never seen those people, didn’t want to.
The attendant was halfway to the processing room when he turned around and said, “Hey, Gwynn...betcha you aren’t going to get this flash done on your arm to commemorate the run, are you?”
Bundling up her abaya under one arm, Gwynn thought about it for a few seconds, then—without putting the abaya over her head for the return trip to the surface of the facility, as she usually did—replied, “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I?” before walking out of the vault, her body reflected brightly on the surrounding painted limestone walls.
AUTHOR’S NOTE TO “FROM THE WALLS OF IREZUMI”
The underground storage facilities mentioned in this story do exist, although at this time neither of them currently stores excised tattoos. The removal and preservation of some Irezumi Japanese full-body tattoos has been done, with the resulting excised tattoos being preserved between sheets of glass.