Buy Skin & Ink: Gay Erotic Fiction
edited by Jim Gladstone
[Lethe Press, 06.2009]

Knives and Roses

The cops weren’t optimistic as you pored over books of pictures that blended into the same face. Headshot, profile. Headshot, profile. Hundreds of criminals you realized were free on the streets. None of them was your tattooed man. The police have no leads.

Richard turns Oprah on you. He says, You can’t live your life as a victim. You have to take control. You tell him to shut up.

The tattoo comes alive in your dreams. The roses dart off the Medusa head of the knife and fly at you. You are frozen as the roseblades slice through your clothes, teasing your hot flesh with their pinpricks. You lie beneath the blue-eyed entity in the darkness as your mutilated clothes disintegrate. Faggot, he says. You fucking faggot. The knife rams your ass, holy and searing, until you are reshaped in its form. In his blue eyes you are his tattoo, swaddled in roses. You wake up in a cold sweat with a guilty hard-on and roll away from Richard’s sleeping form.

You start drinking so you can sleep, then take over-the-counter sleeping pills, then prescriptions, but they only make you groggy and more depressed. You stop showering and dressing. The television is your only connection to the outside world. Richard says, I can’t watch you self-destruct. You need help.

Finish reading "Knives and Roses" in Skin & Ink or The Silent Hustler