Sam leaned forward on the bathroom sink and stared at his violet chest in the mirror, falling into a familiar trance. Time seemed to flow faster when he. The red symbols and characters, normally static and arcane, slowly drifted across his skin as the minutes crawled into hours. He wouldn’t be getting much sleep this night.

The symbols evolved and changed, becoming something new as they slid sideways, or rose and fell along his body. Some seemed to appear as a dot and grow, blossoming like occult flowers, while others shrunk into nothing. In the time distortion of his trance, Sam felt as if his body were merely a window in reality, opening up to a dark sea of hidden symbolism.

They all looked familiar, tickling his brain with meanings, but never quite giving into the full kiss of knowledge. Something that appeared Chinese seemed to melt into the soft curves of Arabic, but no meanings came to Sam. The symbol really wasn’t Chinese or Arabic, though he had seen it before, haunting his flesh in the past.

Questions scrolled through his mind, much like the symbols on his body.
Did I draw these on the bodies of others while in the Hedge?
Were these tattooed on me, only to be lost in the abyss where my soul once was?
Are these images in my head, presented for others to see as punishment of some kind?

He heard keys in the door as the shops owner arrived to open up for business. Sam put his shirt back on, listening to the door open, footsteps, and the owner calling out.

“Sam, you back there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,”he responded.

Something that looked like a stylized question mark lingered on his right cheek.

And people wondered why a tattoo artist such as himself never had his own tattoos.