“Rita regains consciousness after a motorcycle accident. She has received skin grafts covered in tattoos from an anonymous organ donor. The tattoos provide Rita with clues to the donor’s dark proclivities.”
“He’s going to kill you,” a voice said. The car stank. Knowing a chain-smoker guarantees an intimacy with futility and death. It’s not always the cigarettes that kill them, though.
“You were always my friend,” the driver replied. His hands rubbed back and forth on a small tin container. The metal was old and the printing faded. He stopped, then turned his hands to lay them on the box. Upturned wrists exposed two identical, yet aged tattoos. After taking a deep breath, he opened the box and stroked the photo behind the mess of trinkets and knick-knacks. **
He laughed.
“Are you making fun of me,” came a sweet voice. He looked at the younger girl and smiled. Jacob caressed his daughter’s face and held her in his arms as he snapped a selfie with her.
“No, my litta Rita,” he said, stroking her mane of red hair. The young girl smiled before looking intently at the amateur wooden craft-work in her hands. A shadow appeared along the cement, giving form to a silhouette against the blue and white backdrop of the distant sky. Jacob looked up at the man standing across the garage by the opened door.
“Hello, Jacob,” came a strong voice. “The community sends you warm regards.” In return, Jacob regarded the man with a concerned expression but said nothing.
“Grandpa!” The young, blue mushroom hatted girl ran to the man and gave him a tight embrace. He returned the affection promptly.
“You’ve gotten so much bigger! And such a pretty hat for a young girl,” he said. Rita giggled. He stood and gave the contents of the garage a long look. “You’ve gotten much better at your craft, I see,” said the man with a neutral expression as he eyed Jacob.
“It pays the bills, Issac,” Jacob said back after a slight pause. Issac looked at the sleeves covering Jacob’s arms before regarding his own. Rita pulled expectantly on Issac’s pantlegs.
“Show me a magic trick grandpa!” she said. Jacob moved sharply toward them before Issac put up his hand.
“There’s no need for that,” he said. Jacob hesitated. Issac pulled out a simple deck of cards before asking Rita, “Pick a card, any card,” and held them out to her. **
“Do you remember that?” said the driver. He looked out the windshield toward a large, still crane. The surroundings were eerie, like a paused movie. The absent humanity drove a cement truck here and loaded a pile of beams there. He found it ironic how familiar the scene felt.
“We all have a choice,” said the voice.
“I had a choice. But I made it long ago,” he said. The driver opened the glove compartment, removed a gun and exited the vehicle. He left the empty car behind.
**
“… third degree … almost complete grafts … blood type … donor … understand her situation … possible amnesia … poison …”, came the voices intermittently.
“How are you feeling,” came a loud voice. Rita jumped. She looked around anxiously and found the nurse staring back at her surprised. “You’re awake! I’ll be right back!” she said as she scurried away. Rita could hear the soft echos of someone calling for a doctor as she lay in the hospital bed. She rubbed her itching forearm before noticing a foreign mark emblazoned on the darkened skin. Who am I? From the corner of her left eye, a tall, bearded man stared at her intently.
“Who are you,” she asked tersely. She tried her legs tentatively and noticed that she could stand. The black-robed gentleman continued to stare at her. She asked again, and again he simply followed her movements with a tense countenance, like a painting stalking its guests. A loud clack of a dropped tray came as the nurse and doctor stared at Rita in surprise. She felt her heart-rate rise with the unexpected interruption. The figure moved like a phantom and struck them in the chests.
They died. Rita screamed. She ran through the hallway, but the robed man followed her unyieldingly. She found a stairwell and ran down it. Her arms and legs felt foreign to her. She looked at them and stopped in shock on the stairs. She was covered in a messy patchwork of tattoos. She chose one at random and rubbed at it furiously before continuing down. It has to be a dream, she thought to herself.
“Wait!” came a voice. The robed man stood at the next landing. She hesitated with a surprised expression, but immediately exited through the stairwell door. *This man will kill me. *Down the hall, she saw a policeman waiting at a receptionist desk.
“Help me,” she yelled. The policeman turned to her in surprise. “Please, take me out of here! There’s a man trying to kill me!” she said as she reached him. He looked at her in confusion but then took her hand and led her out the hospital’s front door.
**
“Where are you taking me,” she asked. The infinite abyss of desert zoomed by on both sides of the car as millions of stars shown above. They had left the city about fifteen minutes ago, and she didn’t think there was a station out this far. Maybe he can’t hear me through the plastic window? She used the glowing LEDs to look at the tattoos on her legs. They contained men in various poses, weapons of various kinds, flowers, herbs, and tools of various types. They were not aesthetically pleasing at all. Why would anyone do this to themselves? She gently caressed one of the flowery looking tattoos. It was one of few good looking ones.
The car stopped. The policeman exited.
“Listen to me,” said a familiar voice. She started as she saw the robed figure sitting to her left. “You are in grave danger. You must listen to me and do exactly as I say,” he said.
“Who are you,” she said as she felt her heart-rate increase. The man fidgeted and looked around alertly.
“We don’t have time. Trust me, and I will help you. This man will kill you. Do you see a police station around here? Above your belly button is a small tattoo with a black leopard. Rub the tattoo as hard as you can three times. Do this or you will die,” the man said. The car door opened to her right. Startled, she looked as the policeman grabbed her. She glanced back and the man was gone.
“Get out!” the policeman said. They were in the middle of nowhere. She knew exactly what was going to happen: a shallow grave and not a mourner for twenty miles. She hit the ground, scraping her knees on the sand. Beside her lay the man in the black robe. He stared into her eyes as she lay on her side staring into his. He wasn’t bad looking for an apparition. The policeman then did something unexpected. He dragged the phantom away from the road toward darkness, leaving her behind.
She waited and looked in wonder at the brilliant sky. She had never quite seen so many stars. *What is going on? *Why would he leave me here? She got into the running cruiser and tried to put it into gear, but it would not budge. Flabbergasted, she noticed a familiar sight on her upper arm. That is…! She gasped. She knew this tattoo. She had only seen it once, but she knew. It was a black chain wrapped around a red rose. Her father designed that tattoo when he proposed to her mother. It was finished the day of their wedding. She was wearing her father’s tattoos! Oh God. The sudden realization hit her. Her father was dead.
This robed creature was connected with her father. She made her decision, and closed her eyes. She was being dragged through the desert. She looked down and raised her shirt, rubbing the black leopard tattoo as hard as she could three times as they approached a bright light. Suddenly, she was standing across a fire from the two men. The policeman raised the robed man up and told him not to move. The man caught the policeman off guard and knocked him out with a swift blow to the head.
She was standing over the rag-doll figure on the ground when the robed man yelled, “Run!” She ran with all her might toward the car. She got in, put it in gear and drove back toward the city.
**
Rita concentrated as she drove. Am I going mad?
“Do you want to know what is going on?” the man asked. He was sitting in the passenger seat. She wasn’t surprised to see him.
“My father died and it made me crazy,” she asserted. She couldn’t cry or feel emotions. She was broken. How could she grieve a man she couldn’t remember, except for the fact that he was her father and that he loved her mother?
“Follow me and I will show you,” he said. A moment later, she was sitting in the passenger seat, looking at the desert as the city lights grew closer.
**
She walked toward the warehouse. The robed man silently stalked his prey and killed the disguised guards on the perimeter. She was a child again. The robed man greeted her at the entrance.
“Your father was an assassin,” he said. She walked past him into the lair. Her mind began to wander as a black blur killed men while she made her way between rows of stacked containers. I am knitting. She remembered knitting with her mother. A beautiful woman who always cared for others above herself. Rita knelt down, removed her small, child-sized dress and placed an armored robe about her shoulders. She entered a back room. A labyrinth of hallways and men entreated her presence. They died swiftly as she rubbed various tattoos.* I’m wearing a blue mushroom hat*. She was woodworking with her father in their old garage. He was a strong, independent man. She removed her hat and replaced it with one of the fallen’s helmets. She knew where she had to go.
She entered a large room with mats and training equipment strewn about. A wall at the back contained an engraving large enough for any to see. She stopped in front of it and read its words. A stirring treatise on slow-release hallucinogens, separating mind from body, and being “still of mind”. She looked down, and stared at the fresh corpse before her. She glanced at her left hand. I have a wooden doll. She remembered the last time she played with one: the day before she entered this room for the first time. She knelt down, dropped the doll, and took the dagger lying beside the man.
“Do you understand now?” the phantom asked beside her. “Do you remember who you really are?” She stared back at him. He couldn’t possibly understand what she felt. She was viciously burned, her father killed, and his skin used to save her life.
**
She laid prone on the third floor of an unfinished building as she watched her former brethren surround a figure at its center. Hundreds of candles dotted the perimeter, surrounded by various hydraulic construction equipment. She could hear the soft tremolo of chanting.
A man approached the center. She gasped silently. It was the policeman, but he was now wearing a dark robe. He had somehow made it back quickly. It had been mere minutes since she left the lair. “I approach to heed the call and lead us all into stillness,” the policeman said.
The man in the center hesitated, but would not accede. In a flash, the policeman quickly attacked. The older man fought back, and with a rapid display not parsable by human eyes alone, his dagger was stolen and the old man lay dead. The policeman turned in victory to a startling sight. Every single hooded figure within the circle was dead, at least twenty in all.
Rita left the confines of the building and ran toward him. She gave a curt nod to the robed man hidden atop a tractor before she stopped.
“I am going to kill you, Esau,” she said. Without fanfare, she attacked in concert with her robed phantom. Esau was startled, but quickly began to fight back. He was good. He was very good. The robed man fought valiantly but was overwhelmed. Esau removed one of the phantom’s legs.
Rita screamed. She looked down and blood spurted from her stump. She rubbed a tattoo and the robed man closed the wound with medical prowess. Again, she was looking at the robed man on the ground. The pain was gone as she stood next to him.
“I deserve this. It’s my birthright,” Esau said. The robed man reached out and grabbed Esau’s heel. It was all he could do. Esau laughed and kicked his hand away. “Do you know who I am, Rita? Don’t you know why I burned you and killed your father? I’m your uncle.” Rita gaped.
“That’s not true, it can’t be true,” she said as she lay on the ground, gripping her leg and reaching for Esau’s heel again. She stopped and looked toward her grandfather laying dead a few feet away. She began to cry. There was nothing more important to her in the world than family. She felt love and betrayal simultaneously. It overwhelmed her.
“I’m sorry. It’s true. Sadly, we won’t get a chance to catch up,” he said as he raised his dagger above the phantom’s head and brought it down. A sudden gunshot rang out. She looked up and saw her grandfather with his arm raised, shaking, before it dropped and he stared at the sky with dead eyes. She thought she smelled the distinct odor of cigarettes in the air. Esau dropped beside her. The bullet had pierced his side, but he still lived. She looked in front of her and saw his dagger. She took it, held it above his throat and brought it down with as much force as she could muster. He died instantly. Rita withdrew the dagger. She rubbed a tattoo and sat with her phantom for several minutes in silence, before slitting both her wrists. She laid back in the dirt, staring at the hundreds of stars above.