Elyza always loved to draw. From when she was little, she would pencil universes -- chaos in the silent vacuum of space, ships plummeting to the earth like the burnt remains of glory. She would see a toxic nature, no longer natural, but luminescent and beautiful and terrifying, and let the colors flow from her finger tips as she worked the pastel into the rough paper.
It felt almost like an accident when she started tattooing. She always knew she would be an artist, yes, but she never thought her illustrative style would translate well. On others, she hatched designs of victorian roses and playing foxes, as if lifted from a yellowed page, or skulls, serpents, daggers, and half-dead wolves -- those too as if she had drawn them for a book.
But for herself, it was different. In her visions she saw solid black patterns on skin, curving, sharp, deliberate. Her interest in tattoos began with those images that rose from the haze of her dreams, with words -- not understood but familiar -- ringing in her ears.
Her skin itched without them.
Her notebook was consumed by drawings of the precise designs the first time she walked through the doors of the studio. Jeff -- Jefferson, he said his name was, but Elyza liked to call him Jeffy to watch his hackles rise -- began with the design on her back. In the hours they spent, over weeks, Elyza spoke much and Jeff very little; but as she felt herself become whole, her quips and bawdy humor receded. And when he spoke, his low voice washed over her like the warm brine of Bondi, lulling and familiar.
When he handed her the machine and a pig skin, she felt a bright rush, distantly recognizable: hope.
The indelible illustrations on pigskin were interspersed with more of her own ink. The constant buzz became a hum throughout her body. She watched as her visions flowed from her hand through the needle into her forearm, the ink a black blood thrumming through her skin.
Though Jefferson began them, she finished her tattoos herself. She would make herself whole again.