Inkchanger

14: Roses

The instant I touch the cool metal of the inkpen, lightning dives into my skin. It punctures every vein simultaneously with cool blue fire, with the sweetest kisses, with the sharpest knives. It's a deluge of the familiar-yet-foreign overload of pleasure. It skims along the edges of my mind and reads my thoughts. It whispers without speaking, its hissing angel's voice rejoicing, doing backflips in anticipation.

Nownownow. Yesyesyes.

I can see the fear in Sofi's eyes as I lift the pen. She trembles with trepidation I can't afford to feel. She holds it for me. All that's left inside my skin is the lightning.

I wonder briefly if I look like the soldiers on the news, the ones radiating resolution and grim purpose. I set my jaw to imitate that courage, hoping to draw in just a little more. Just enough to do what needs to be done.

I waver.

I continue.

My eyes flutter shut – I'm not sure if I close them or if they do it on their own - and the inkpen cranks its electricity. Like a heavy metal drummer discovering a double kick pedal. The pounding of it races my blood so fast I'm afraid my skin will burn and peel from the carnal-heat redness of my bare skin.

No mirror, not even the strange reflected light of the cavern to help me. I don't need it. The design is seared into my fingers by years of drawing the same image over and over and over. Always the same, always different, always something I can't quite touch even though it erupts from the molten core of me. I wake and live it, sleep and dream it. My hands will pour out the meaning; the inkpen will channel it into the living canvas of my flesh. Where it has always belonged and never been.

I press the needle to my chest, just over my heart. My shattered-and-glued-back-together heart. My missing-pieces-and-edges heart. My locked-up-and-thrown-away-the-key heart. My iceberg-in-the-freezing-ocean heart. It jumps to meet the needle's point. It tries to shatter its bony cage just to kiss the face of its savior.

The shock of contact is over in milliseconds. Nanoseconds. Inverse seconds. No pain. Reverse pain. Taking pain away from memories, as if pain had never happened.

The only evidence that the inkpen has even pricked my skin is the deliciously butter-melting glow that radiates across unending acres of my body. I roll on forever. In the tiny part of my mind capable of thought, I wonder if Sofi can see it. I wonder if I'm as luminous outside as inside.

And now there is nothing but flow.

I conduct a thousand-piece orchestra. I trace the journey of a continental railroad. I author the Great American Novel. I oversee the rise and fall of an empire. I paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I sketch out the future, the present, the past. I etch my heart onto the outside.

Heart to collarbone. Collarbone to throat. Throat to heart. Simple, sketched lines that expand and curl and shade themselves under the inkpen's eagerness to cover every inch of blood-flushed skin. A wild and unconstrained tangle of lines, angles, curves, shades, emptiness.

Red and black. Stems and thorns. Briars and blossoms.

Ink and skin.

The roses unfurl as they're drawn, leaping from buds to tissue-thin petals in an instant, they're so eager to be born. I feel each one open, brushing along my too-hot self like a nearly-missed kiss. Carmine and vermillion. Claret and ruby. Crimson and scarlet. The blossoms spread baby-soft wings, covering the empty spaces between thorns and stems until no gap remains. Every inch of my chest is filled with enormous dewy flowers, each one driving its tangled, black roots straight down, searching for a safe, warm place to connect.