“I got electrical eyeballs and bad ideas.” He slurred his words into his drink as he spoke, hoping somebody would be impressed. “I once caught a comet in my hands, and the Mayor of New York owes me a drink for saving his city.”

The music in this place is just noise, sans signal. Bass pumps irregularly, and lyrics wind in and out of the tune like spaghetti noodles slipping down a drain. It’s coherent, but it makes no sense.

He claims his cock cums lightning, and that his orgasms can heal the sick. “Blind girls can see the stars when I fuck ‘em,” he insists, and when he smiles, his broken teeth look like a set of bottles that somebody set into with a baseball bat.

Outside, the sky is raining fire, shitting it really, all across the world. All across the world, it’s ending. The world is ending. Everything is concluding.

Two more kisses and a barrel full of smoke.

Then it all comes crashing down.

“She never fucking loved me until it was too late,” he admits.
And he’s right.

There is some disparity amongst the illusions. 

We think we’re seeing straight, but really, we’re trapped in a cage of light. Thick bars made of beams of light. Walls of intensified nothingness blocking out the outside world. 

There’s an old man, creeping around outside. He’s the suit a monster wears; a monster as big as a city block, with tentacles that choke and claws that tear. You can see the old man bulging, around the eyes and genitalia, as the monster fights to be free of its costume. The costume is too tight. The monster is too hungry. The ground beneath its feet, shutters as it steps.

A crow follows the old man down the street, swooping lazily through the air and cawing half-heartedly to warn the others of his approach. The crow warns the city of the coming of the old man who is just a suit the monster wears. The crow’s cries are long and skeletal, like you can hear the echoes bouncing off of fleshless bones. 

I’ve taken my lover to the rooftop, to watch the city falter. My lover is a pretty young boy with a deep tan and long black hair. He’s got fake teeth, fake ID, and a fake eye that glistens like oil in moonlight when the street-lamps hit it. Well, he says he’s my lover, but all he really loves, is to lie. Me, I take what I can get. 

It’s dawn in the city. Monsters dressed as old men, and slow-moving birds, are all that’s really aware or awake out there. They’re passing time without much effort, and looking for little forgotten things to claim as their own; empty cans and lost children. 

It’s dawn in the city; I cough up grey phlegm in my throat, and spit it over the side. My thickened saliva falls eighteen floors, and hits the ground like a shattered egg. I hug my arms to my chest. The wind, like some haunted dog, begins to howl. 

So, I went out and got some ink today.

I went to a little place that opened recently, right above the fetish store where I bought my girlfriend her collar for, I think it was her 23rd birthday? 

I was just going in to inquire about a price, and maybe setting an appointment for tomorrow, but once I’d told the artist, a really nice lady named Charlotte, what I wanted, she offered to just do it right there on the spot.

It took about ten minutes. It hurt as bad as something does. Luckily, she had a silent gun, which was great, because the sound was the worst part about the last time I was under the needle. I just hate that hornet’s buzz as the metal goes into the skin at whatever, a thousand little pokes a minute or something silly like that.

And now I got it. I got my third tattoo, my second in entirely white ink. 

It’s the symbol for the Omega Gang, or the New-New X-Men, from Grant Morrison’s run on the series. I know that’s pretty geeky, but I dig it. I like that it’s not a tattoo of a character, it’s a tattoo that some of the characters got, and it was designed by two of my favourite comic-professionals in the world - Grant, and Frank Quitely. 

I also like it, ‘cause it’s kinda abstract. It’s not like “yabba yabba, check this shit out.” It’s just like, a couple of characters, which will slowly fade into a strangely scar-like cast. 

(I don’t like to be one of those “talking about my tattoos,” sorta guy, but… gimmie a break. I just got the thing.)

I’ve been working  a comic book store for almost 10 years now, and I’ve been reading X-Men comics since I was 5, so… I feel good about adopting this symbolism onto myself. 

Anyway. That’s my story. Is ink!