Overview

Secrets and rage can get under the skin in an unsettling short story by Ivy Pochoda, award-winning author of Sing Her Down and These Women.

Swan is a tattoo artist new to a community in the California desert when a mourning desert dweller named Kurt requests a tribute tattoo to his dead wife. Swan agrees, but the locals warn her: don’t indulge Kurt in his tragic memories. No wonder. As Kurt returns for more tattoos, the truth about his wife’s death begins to emerge in the ink. And it isn’t pretty.