The Man with Ink by Lawrence Buentello

The Man with Ink by Lawrence Buentello

Coffee shops are legion in big cities. Not just the chain stores, but independents catering to those who not only want a decent cup of coffee but also unique ambiance. You’ll find any number of perfectly ordinary white-collar drones in the chain stores, as well as individuals who indulge in more stylish personal expression.

But in the independently owned coffee shops you’ll find a distinct crowd, depending on the nature of the ambiance their owners seek to exhibit. Aging trend-setters in one shop, the youthful avant-garde in another—and, like the shop in which I sat that cold, gray Manhattan morning, brooding philosophic types in yet another.

I considered myself an artist, a poet, actually. I composed perhaps a poem a month, but each a carefully crafted work of art. At least, to me. Very few had appeared in publications other than the most obscure, though my artistic obscurity was almost certainly a symptom of  unrecognized genius fantastically ahead of its time.

And it was while sitting in Aldous Smith’s Roasted Bean Aficionado, contemplating the muse, that I encountered a man with ink.

 Completely out of place, even in the hipster environment, he sat at a table near the tinted front window leaning back in his chair, a wide smile on his bearded face. The beard glistened as blackly as his eyes and hair, shining as if covered in oil. He wore a half-open white linen shirt, despite the chill in the air, sleeves rolled tightly to his biceps. His heavily muscled body lay only partially hidden by his attire. A steaming cup sat on the table before him, ignored. He kept turning his head from side to side, grinning as if watching a parade.

It wasn’t his enthusiastic expression that caught my notice—greater New York was full of eccentrics—but the tattoos on his pale white forearms, which lay palms-up on the tabletop like a Buddha’s in repose. On his left forearm lay the image of a sword, on his right an emerald-green dragon. The workmanship of these tattoos was magnificent—though I wasn’t an ink junkie myself, I could admire the skill of a superior tattoo artist. The sword glimmered in three-dimensions, offering an illusion of silvery iron and golden hilt; the dragon, too, exhibited a realistic quality, its jade scales shimmering as if the creature were a living entity moving subtly to escape its prison of flesh. Its red eyes seemed to glare back at me, annoyed by my staring.

I must have been staring at the man’s arms a little too long, because his voice, deep and resonant, eventually called out to me. “You admire my hoard!”

I glanced up into his eyes, then quickly down at the neglected pen and journal on my table, embarrassed to have my New York reserve taken by surprise. I looked up again—he smiled as he briefly raised his forearms and nodded.

In that instant I knew I had the option to lower my head again and pretend he’d never spoken—or engage the man and become ensnared in his particular drama. Discretion would have been the better part of valor, but I still wanted to know who’d inked his tattoos. If I were to ever have extensive illustrations on my arms I would like to have known the artist.

“Your tattoos,” I said, noticing that the few other patrons in the shop were dutifully minding their own business by brooding over their overpriced beverages. “That’s fine workmanship. Who did them?”

The man glanced down at his arms, then smiled at me again. “Done? They were not done. They were created. Come, sit with me and I’ll tell you the story of my companions!”

I licked my lips as I thought the matter over. Then I gathered my notebook and cup of coffee, justifying my stupidity by believing I just might conjure a good poem from the encounter, perhaps a few lines on mental illness in the big city, and joined him at his table.

His enthusiastic grin never faded. He stared at me—a plain, unshaven thirty year old computer tech who wrote poetry in his spare time—as if I were about to hand him the Holy Grail. If he was high on something, he seemed to handle it well.

“These are not tattoos, my friend,” he said, again gently raising his arms. “They are creations.”

“Yes, artistic creations.”

“Magical creations!”

Since his dark eyes refused to betray whether or not he was joking, or fond of hyperbole, I shamefully judged him crazy. The potential for literary inspiration suddenly seemed less motivating.

“What do you mean by ‘creations’?” I asked. “They look like tattoos to me. Fine tattoos, but tattoos nonetheless.”

“As they are meant to appear. But, in truth, they are magical creations. I am from another time, another reality.”

I blinked. Repeatedly. “Is that so?”

“I know it seems impossible, but it’s true. A magical spell has allowed me to travel to your time, and to know your language. This is a magnificent place! It took me days to accommodate my senses to all the grand structures and bizarrely clad people of your time.”

“Tourists from Nebraska feel the same way. New York tends to have that effect on people.”

“Is Nebraska nearby?”

“Not really.”

His smile weakened. “That is disappointing. I would like to see as many places as possible while I’m here.”

I glanced around the shop to see if anyone else was listening to our conversation, noted more brooding, and craned my neck to see if I could locate Aldous Smith, who might be the only person considerate enough to rescue me from my predicament. Smith was undoubtedly in the back, sleeping while his minions kept the register. Smith was seventy-eight.

Persevering in the face of lunacy, I told him my name was Phillip. He told me his name was Sir Zimith of Darmica.

“And that’s where you’re from?” I asked. “A place called Darmica?”

“Of course,” he said, “a beautiful province south of the Gregin Mountains. I live in the donjon when not carrying out my sovereign’s wishes.”

“Is this a medieval setting? Castles and such?”

“Fortifications. The lesser settlements have only earthen walls for protection. We have no machines as you do now, but we have magic. Some of us, of course, as it is not a simple art to master.”

“But you have mastered it?”

“No!” He laughed heartily, ignoring the stares of everyone else in the room. “I’m merely a man. A knight!” He lifted his chest at this, obviously proud of the title. “It is my wife who is the practitioner of magical arts.”

“Your wife sent you here?”

“She enchanted me. Gave me knowledge of your language, your history, your people. For I wished to know!”

“You wished to know our times, specifically?”

“Well, any future times, really,” he said, nodding. “You see, she used her craft to send me to this future. And here I am!”

“Here you are. But if you come from a time of medieval trappings, how could you possibly understand skyscrapers, automobiles, and computers?”

“My Endira gave this knowledge to me. The mechanical horses, the sky-towers, the magical light boxes that speak to you. I would not understand their purposes, otherwise. They are wonderful. Don’t you believe they are wonderful?”

“Certainly useful in our times,” I said, wondering if I should be encouraging his delusions. “I suppose if we had magic, we wouldn’t need those things.”

“That your people have no magic is a startling notion,” he said, in all seriousness. “But I’ve come to accept that everything you do is achieved through the physical forces of men and machines. No spells, no potions, no incantations to raise the dead. Unbelievable!”

“We do have some pretty good pharmaceuticals. Some that actually seem magical, at least for a while after ingesting them. But no incantations that actually work. We also have something called ‘mass media’ that seems to enthrall people, but that’s like evil magic, I guess.”

“Evil magic will tarnish your heart,” he admonished. “It is a demon’s gateway to the soul!”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

“My Endira only practices good magic.”

“To send you on vacations to other times and other worlds.”

“Precisely, my friend. Tell me, what were you composing with your writing implements?”

I glanced down at my notebook again, almost embarrassed to answer his question. “I write poetry. I was working on a poem when I noticed your tattoos.”

“You’re a poet! Superb! Sing us a ballad, good poet!”

“I’m not that kind of poet.”

“You do not sing? Well! I still have much to learn!”

“Much. And speaking of tattoos, you were going to tell me about yours?”

“They are not tattoos, they are creations.”

Throughout our conversation he’d held his forearms exposed on the table as if it were the only comfortable position he could manage. Now he inclined his chin to his left forearm, saying, “This is my long blade, Isori, victor of a hundred battles!” Then he inclined his chin to his right forearm. “And this is Peltroni, my dragon. It is he that I rode upon, between his great wings, through time and space into your world. He is my war-dragon, and loyal to the crown.”

“Enchanted by your wife to serve as a time machine?”

“In a manner of speaking. He breathes hell-fire and is immortal!”

I stared at Peltroni again, the hell-fire breathing time-travelling dragon, mesmerized by the realistic design. I wondered how the tattooist had managed to deepen the colors in the man’s skin to create such an impossible illusion of dimensionality. The sword Isori, too, seemed impossibly detailed—I could actually see fine patterns of enfolded iron layers and subtle gray shadings. In that moment I became lost in the illusion of his artwork, stunned by the beauty of the detailing and mystified by its artist’s techniques.

“I carry both with me, you see,” Sir Zimith said. He laughed brightly. “I could not be seen walking through your towns and villages with a great sword at my side, or perched between the wings of an immense flying dragon. So my wife cast a spell upon myself, my dragon, and my sword so that, after uttering a secret phrase, both weapon and beast would lay confined upon my person until released again. One phrase to release Isori, another to free Peltroni. A knight never knows when he’ll need his sword or his dragon.”

“We do have swords in our time,” I said, reluctantly looking away from his tattoos. “We can’t legally carry them around in the Burroughs, though. I don’t think we’ve had dragons for eons, if ever. We have to make due with cell phones.”

“Is a cell phone magical?” he asked, leaning forward excitedly.

“Not really, though mine seems to cause my intelligence to shrivel pretty mysteriously. But I can use it to magically troll anyone I want.”

He shook his head somberly. “Trolls are a nuisance. But you have not a troll’s countenance?”

“We turn into different kinds of trolls in my reality. It seems to be the new great American pastime.”

“I once beheaded a troll with Isori!”

“If only that were possible in this time,” I said. Up until that moment our conversation seemed a surreal exercise, one I’d extended past the boundaries of decency, if a sane fellow is understood as the keeper of the insane chap. But now I only wanted our conversation to conclude so I could return to literary obscurity without igniting some hidden fury in his mind concerning trolls or sorcerers or assorted chimeras.

“Tell me,” I said, trying to direct his oratory toward a denouement. “What made you want to leave your own place and time to travel to another? How could you even know our time and place existed?”

“After my last conquest,” he replied evenly, stroking his lustrous beard before laying his arm awkwardly on the table again, “I acquired a black mirror, of the quality used by magicians. Its owner, not regrettably, lost all his limbs in the conquest and perished shortly thereafter. He practiced evil magic, you see. Unfortunately, I happened to gaze into the vast onyx field of that glass and, being briefly ensorcelled, beheld other realities through time and space. Only my magnificent Peltroni understood the danger and smashed the black glass with his mighty tail. But in those moments during which I stood in thrall within the vision of the mirror, I attained knowledge of all the eras that lay beyond my own, and grew obsessed. My wife, being herself a skilled enchantress, knew this fascination would not abate without my satisfying my curiosity of those times and locations, and so arranged to send me thither and yon. Yours is but one glorious era I have seen. And I find your times delightful!”

“Are you staying long in our delightful times?”

He shook his head. “Alas, I cannot. My stay in each realm is limited and I have several other eras to visit before returning to my beloved Darmica. On Peltroni’s back I shall fly off through the void to my next destination.”

“Are you leaving soon?”

“This eve, I’m afraid. I wish I had more time in your lands.”

“Have you seen the Battery?”

“Yes!”

“Yankee stadium?”

“Yes! Your sport is curious!”

“New Jersey?”

“No, I have not.”

“Good for you. They should have burned the bridges long ago. Coney Island’s still kind of interesting. See it if you have the time.”

“I shall, my friend!”

Absently, I reached down for my coffee cup, then brought it to my lips, but my coffee had gone stone cold during our conversation. I winced and set the cup down, muttering, “I hate cold coffee,” as I met his eyes again.

They held me, those eyes. I could see, through my peripheral vision, that he still held the same smile on his lips, but I couldn’t shift my gaze—his eyes were like small, black mirrors from which I couldn’t look away. In them, in miniature, I saw a strange mix of faces, shapes, structures, mountains, and seas flashing in all that black. It seemed as if I were watching a movie playing on two tiny screens, of things and places I had never seen before—

And while I couldn’t move my eyes, or my body for that matter, something flashed below my vision, some bright light blazing briefly below my eyes, and then the light ceased.

I blinked, found that I could move my eyes again, my head, my body. It was another moment before I focused once again on the man with ink, and then I realized he was rubbing his arm at the wrist, as if soothing some irritation. Still smiling, he rose from his chair and wished me a hearty farewell.

I sat in silence as he swaggered through the door of Aldous Smith’s Roasted Bean Aficionado; my gaze followed his silhouette through the tinted window of the shop as he moved down the street.

When my head finally cleared I sat back and smiled to myself. You really do meet strange people in coffee shops. I knew a poem lay unwritten in the experience—but nothing immediately came to mind. Such a poem would have to include magic, belief, and insanity as its subject matter, and I wasn’t sure if I possessed the skill to effectively blend all these elements.

But my contemplation of the poetic arts ceased when I stared down at my cup and noticed the wisps of steam rising from the hot bubbling coffee within.

—

Lawrence Buentello has been publishing short stories in speculative fiction venues for many years and hasn’t yet tired of telling tales. His latest published book is In the Lands of the Fallen Kings, a heroic fantasy novel. Buentello resides in his hometown of San Antonio, Texas.