Burning Time

everything. But all he’d actually tattooed so far was the area around the navel.

It was coming out pretty good, if you looked beyond the puffiness and irritation of the skin. In some places it had blown up pretty bad. It occurred to him that she might be allergic to the ink, even though he had gotten the best kind, the one with the brightest colors. But he wasn’t going to let the possibility of an allergic reaction worry him. What difference did it make?

Well, the difference was that here he had come all this way to do something special on this particular body, and she turned out to be some kind of witch that was trying to fuck it up. Well, she wanted to puff up, that was fine. He’d burn her up. He just had to get her decorated first.

She was married to a doctor, but Troland was the Doctor of Death. Troland had decided to incorporate the doctor’s staff down the middle of her body with the twisted snakes and the flames around it. Except that he’d leave a space on her chest for the brand. Then the Harley-Davidson wheels and the eagles’ wings would come out of the snakes’ shoulders and spill out her sides while the serpents’ teeth devoured her nipples. He had only gotten that far. He hadn’t decided yet what to put on her neck and cheeks. And now this bitch was telling him he had to get out. No way he was going to get out.

“Don’t tell me to shhh,” she cried. “It’s my house. I’ll say what I want.”

It became clear that the crone wasn’t going away. She took two steps toward the bedroom. “I’m going to see what kind of dirty stuff you’re doing in there—”

The pressure had built up so much he wasn’t thinking any more when he grabbed her. He just wanted it to stop. At first he took hold of her and shook her as if she were a sack of laundry. But she wasn’t quiet. Her bones made cracking sounds like they were all breaking at once, and she squawked with surprise.

“Shut up!” Even now she was infuriating.

His hands went around her scraggy throat. The skin hung down from her chin, crepey and soft. He almost gagged with disgust. Now she was off balance, hanging by his hands, heavy and inert. Not so hard to kill, but hard to handle.

The package continued making gurgling noises while he wrung her neck, trying to get it to stop. He flung her away from him when her bladder emptied, wetting his boots.

“Fucking shit!” The bad ones thwarted him even in death.

He rushed into the bathroom to wash his hands and clean off his boots. When his hands smelled like soap, he went to check the witch tied up on the bed. He was calmer now.

For a second after he opened the door, he was completely dazzled by his work. It was an awesome sight, the woman covered by his extraordinary drawings in colors so vivid they looked like an oil painting. The only thing that marred the picture was the part he had actually tattooed, which didn’t look like it should at all. Never mind.

Her hands were tied. He had covered her mouth with tape so she’d be quiet.

“How’s it goin’?” he said pleasantly.

Her eyes were wide open, and kind of stunned, focused behind him at the bundle on the floor in the other room.

“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll take it away.”

He closed the door. He was moving slower now, wanted to take a nap. Maybe he’d take a nap. He promised himself a rest after he cleaned up. Yeah, that sounded good. He took some of the plastic he had planned to use for the witch and lined the trunk of the rental car with it. He didn’t want to leave the body in the house where someone might come by and find it. He didn’t want to pick it up either, so he dragged it to the stairs and kicked it step by step all the way down. At the bottom of the stairs, his foot glanced off the bundle. His heavy boot dislodged the ancient lawn mower propped against the wall, setting it in motion. The blades whirred as it rolled over the end of the corpse, severing a brittle toe as if it were a twig in the grass. He hoisted the bundle up and threw it in the trunk. Now he didn’t have to think about it any more.

68

Emma lay there with the tape over her mouth. The door was closed. For a long time after the old woman stopped screaming it was profoundly quiet. Then she heard Troland go to the refrigerator and get something to drink. She could hear the pop of a can opening.

Troland. She could not visualize him as he must have been as a teenager, seeming normal enough to be in school, but doing things no one could even imagine. Her heart felt huge, big enough to burst.

She could hear him moving around out there. She tested the ropes. They were tied so tightly now there was no way to get out of them. She kept opening and closing her hand, trying to keep the circulation going.

Earlier, she had shivered uncontrollably for hours. All she wanted to do was warm up. Then he turned several lights on her so he could see better, and started working on her with the concentration of a surgeon. He shaved her, painted her body with Mennen Speed Stick, and stuck transfers all over it. It was then, before he even set up the table with the inks and the needles and the rubber gloves and the tattoo machine, that she knew what he was going to do. He was going to tattoo her. She knew how it was done. She knew about transfers.

She didn’t even realize she was screaming, totally out of control. She thought the sounds were in her head. He was going to mark her perfect body, and there was nothing she could do to stop him. He was crazy. Nothing would stop him. He’d seen the fake tattoo in her film, and now he was doing one for real. But this wasn’t just a little thing on the shoulder. This was her whole body. He was going to tattoo her whole body. Oh, no. No! Can’t take this. Emma couldn’t stop screaming.

He didn’t seem to hear it.

“No. No, no. No!”

Was this what her daddy described, what it felt like when bombs were falling everywhere, your buddies were dead all around you, your legs were blown off? You were bleeding to death in a muddy swamp, and still you didn’t give up.

“Nooooo.”

She could hear her daddy’s voice behind her, in her ear. Be a soldier, Emmie. Take what they dish out and be a man about it.

“No,” she screamed.

“Shut up, or I’ll tape your mouth,” he said finally. “That’s enough.”

She shut her mouth. And still the screams came out. She felt the ropes with her fingers. They were low on her wrists, too low for the game. Untie the knots with one hand, Emmie. Show me how good you are.

Not good enough.

The first time the needles touched her skin was like a jolt of lightning. She was dead. She knew she would not survive this. The sting and burn, coming both at the same time on the sensitive skin of her stomach, told her life was over. Yet it went on and on, and she was still alive.

Years ago, when she first came to New York, Emma had a long tussle with a young man at the end of a date that had seemed pedestrian and safe. He was a Wall Street lawyer, and he jumped on her in the middle of a conversation about depositions. He didn’t care that she was unwilling, and would only seem to stop for a minute or two to calm her down, before attacking her again. Her body was covered with black and blue marks by the time she finally got rid of him. And even at the door he tried tackling her one last time.

“Hope springs eternal,” he said when he called her two days later for another date.

“I don’t want to die,” Emma whispered now.

Now, instead of freezing to death, she was burning. Her stomach was on fire where he had tattooed it. She could feel the heat radiating outward. He was going to tattoo her whole body until she was burning all over, and still she didn’t want to die.

On the floor by the bed was a butane torch. She stretched out her fingers, wiggling them to see if she could reach it. It worked like a big lighter. Push the handle down, she knew, and a flame would shoot out. What was that for? I have to pee, she thought. He put packing tape on her mouth because she couldn’t keep from making noises. Now she could only make grunting sounds.