How the Lady Shimmer Escaped with Her Life

4 months ago 12

Shimmer was half Japanese, half Gaijin and had dual citizenship by the propitious timing of her birth to a young geisha and a Yankee soldier on R and R from the ‘Nam.

There ain’t shit on her early life for details, which is as it should be. When childhood and adolescence is spent littering mental waste and biographical desiderata it is maturity that becomes cluttered, genius blocked by achievement, any early promise is a lying promise.

Shimmer was in notoriety an empty shade, and in ability a Durer of the needle. as far as we know she never had a proper tattoo parlor, nor did she contribute to vulgar periodicals or exhibitions attempting to popularize her art.

She traveled the world sometimes on an American passport, sometimes Japanese, increasing her store of techniques a refining those amazing effects only she could achieve, alone in her art and among aesthetic heights she had caused it to attain but physically accompanied wherever she went by her disciple and masterwork, Severin the Illuminated Man.

There have been in the history of our species thousands of tattooed men, a few dozen illustrated men, and only three illuminated men of whom Severin was the only one currently living. There has, due no doubt to the effects of patriarchy, never been a woman so thoroughly tattooed that she could be classified as Illuminated, although it is also rumored that the pronouns of Severin have not always been he and him.

A tattooed man is one whose flesh is in the main covered by tattoos, their worth as aesthetic objects should be obvious and perhaps some what awe-inspiring — after all, we don’t refer to a man covered by tattoos of inferior workmanship as a tattooed man but only as a man with tattoos. It is the quality of the tattoos that makes one a true tattooed man.

An illustrated man is one whose body and tattoos, life and art, have become so intertwined that each affect the other, often these illustrations in linear fashion portray the man’s life -the body as novel of external deeds-but also, prophecies upon it (for where would the literature be without the device of foreshadowing) such men by this strange power of their storied skin and the lucid element in the illustration become murderous, a. gothic monsters whom in union of vibrant scarification and skin have set themselves outside civilizing constraints.

Such an individual was described in the book The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

cover of book The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

The illuminated man preserves the qualities of his predecessors, but builds upon these as a story writer might be said to add upon a great tradition. He is totally covered head to toe by tattoos, he is awe-inspiring to those who view, a relation between design form and content is evident and prophetic visions can erupt from the inked cross-hatchings of his design.

Still there are certain added phenomenological elements that justify our creating this new genus and titling it as Illuminated ; these being the accretion of levels of tattooed images upon the skin creates a certain richness to successive layers, much like that of pre-modern artists whose canvases were so dear that works were would be covered by new commissions, the vanished masterpiece’s still managing to suggest their own afterimage on the emergent one.

A crispness and consciousness to the lines is achieved through this superimposition and the prophetic abilities of the illustrated men are heightened so that what is seen to appear on an Illuminated man wills the future, and the present…wills in total, reality itself.

It is said that the labyrinth of all human history can be tracked on the hide of an Illuminated man, and thus the remains of a dead Illuminated Man is of incredible value to those who wish to profit from the future, and to find out the secrets of the past.

Furthermore, an illuminated man’s skin, and musculature, is of an uncommon strength and hardness due to a continual infusion not only of ink and pain but artistic talent, that Mana of creative spirit, so we can see why not every illustrated man succeeds to the level of illumination just by staying power alone — the great art must be made by a great artist.

Indeed Severin’s skin had been so long hardened it was totally impervious to a list of ills too lengthy for enumeration here, but as with all such lists fire and bullets topped it ….

Yet despite these supernatural abilities Severin the Illuminated Man, was in complete thrall to the Lady Shimmer, dominated in both thought and action

Pain, cut into segments of differing lengths and intensities can copy the neurological effects of almost any experience or chemical. A codon of pain massaging the skin that covers a gland may release hormonal chains to change and manipulate the consciousness.

Thus Shimmer, in the routine of her art, had hypnotically broken Severin’s will first to her needle, then to her voice, and finally her thoughts.

A man completely under the power of one’s will, fantasists of inferior stripe spin from this premise webs involving cabinets and mad doctors; what mental cobwebs, what illusions to succumb to!

Only a fool who had another under total domination would waste them on cheap murders and robberies, and a no one who can control another absolutely through will alone would ever be a fool.

Shimmer and Severin traveled the world, often accompanying carnivals that still maintained freakshows, or hitching along with truckers that wanted a magic dragon to curl along their left fore arm, two venomous fangs curved into the veins and pumping straight caffeine for the long haul.

The prices demanded for her tattoos were arbitrary; once in Oklahoma she put an exploding cherry-bomb on the ass of a truck-stop waitress for two cheeseburgers and a side order of fries; any man who touched it became a the most slavish of lovers and from that day the woman’s sex life which had almost withered like a pulled weed set new roots. and tangled dozens of lovers most delightfully across three states.

Another time she put a flail on the heel of a champion MMA competitor so lifelike that when he kicked with that the particular foot in competition his opponents were automatically. snapped into unconsciousness, for this he paid a 65 mustang in prime condition and a Texaco gas card with 2000 dollars credit on it.

Why did Severin never say to Shimmer “I don’t get it shimmer, you could be the richest tattooist on the planet, you could mark only the flesh of the hottest Hollywood hunks, yet we’re sleeping here in a warm Nebraska cornfield that you had to pay a tattoo on the farmer’s fists for!”

Because he did get it; he was her masterwork, under her spell and he understood things without asking. He knew that to tattoo only the flesh of hot Hollywood hunks would soon drain the creative well and leave only the decadent dregs of talent behind.

He knew that there was no challenge thereby, that in pursuing challenge shimmer could corral whatever she wanted= burgers, BMW’s, condos, cornfields, stars, astronauts, a good piece of ass, everything…. including more and greater challenges. Living in an undisciplined come as you go way was you more rewarding for her art than material wealth could be, it kept her soul vital, uncaring, and focused. He knew that nowhere but in this particular off the map Nebraska town would they find a farmer who wanted ‘corn’ tattooed on his left fist and “oats “on the right in Olde English lettering,

So she traveled the world sometimes on a Japanese passport, sometimes American, learning from the master tattooists of all cultures, from the Maori, from the Eskimo, from the Vanomano, from the Gaels even and though in each case she traded trick for trick, and technique for technique she always came away the richer in her learning.

And her field of art was so voluminous that any new fact gleaned opened numerous pathways of application and drew on multitudinous sources for free interpretation, though the professionals with their journals and organizations scorned her — fearing to be shown as mediocrities by the tattooed lightning that broke across a black wrestler’s stygian back in Egypt, the people revered her and spread her name secretly so that stopping in a biker’s bar in Norway some death metal kid would approach her and Severin ,knock-knead, begging that a Grim Reaper to beckon his foes onward might be put on his chest, paying with his priced Harley Davidson V-Rod.

Though the professionals with their magazines and conferences, their fans and infighting, claimed she was an urban myth, and derided the credulity, of poor fools whose backs were so so brilliant with devils and fire that the hypocrites needed to put on sunglasses to keep from being blinded, the people with no stake in tattooing but their own bodies lusted for some miniating depiction by her gun to complete their composition.

It was in Okinawa that Shimmer’s art was requested at the compound of a local Yakuza crime lord “Ah, the beautiful and enigmatic Lady Shimmer” said the lord.

“You wanted to ask a gift?” said Severin for Shimmer, he did not like the large white room where their audience was held because, despite whiteness and natural light from high windows bending in, everything seemed knee-bumping dark; a radiating darkness from the corpulence that had summoned them, a naked sumo-esque man whom was the most intensely tattooed man Severin had ever seen outside a mirror.

“So you are her Illuminated Man?”

“I am.”

“Ahh, you are the first such a I have lever locked upon. No wonder, as Lao himself said ‘only one illuminated man may exist on the earth as any in in any single geveration!’ and, do you know what I am, Illuminated Man?”

“You are the lord who has summoned us, and whose bidding my mistress will do if the bidding is right.”

“Is that so? Tell me, illuminated disciple of the Lady Shimmer, how. many years have you followed your mistress?”

“I don’t know; the first two years were fairly clear, i had started out a young buck in the Marines stationed at Guantanamo Bay, I.. “

“Please stop, of all things I fear worst an embedded tale, narrate not promiscuously to the spider that has you!”

“Now i stall tell you, for i have paid many professors of urban myth and postmodern folklore to learn conclusively that you’ve followed her for 11 years. Those first two years still vivid in mind for having been free of the needle’s mesmeric prick. No, those first years were just to develop the foundation on which she built her palace of mental dominion, she will not have that opportunity with me!”

“O great Yakuza lord, we will leave you now, you don’t need our services- a shrink would be the smarter investment.”

“eh-eh” chided the lord, wagging a septic green finger with a demon’s face where the whorled print should be “let me tell you who i am, Illuminated Man. I am an illustrated man who wants to be illuminated, the Lady Shimmer is the one who will compose that final tattoo to raise me, and you — you are a blockage becoming passé, Illuminated Man.” As he spoke the obscurant tendrils of tribal patterns on his belly seemed to part and resolve, clarifying a picture of Severin being shot by the two Yakuza bodyguards standing at hand as shimmer beatified their lord.

Severin laughed as the bodyguards drew their oversized 44’s “you fellas better be careful, don’t want an any nasty ricochets.” <bang> bang> went the guns, *ping ping* ricocheted the bullets, chipping bits off the heretofore unmarred floor,

“You fools!” shouted the lord “forget those guns…”. the belly showed more bodyguards running in from doors all about the hall; they came; the belly showed them tackling Severin and wrestling. him down and separating him from Shimmer.

Things went pretty much like the belly predicted although Severin tossed some about like ragdolls (for, as we must ever remember, he had super- strength.)

The belly showed then drawing their Katanas and piercing Severin’s eyes, it didn’t work, he merely shut his tattooed eyelids — they were flummoxed — how could one kill this man.

The belly was extremely inventive, it showed all sorts of variations like a hi-definition crystal ball and in the tumult Severin was turned upside down and his bare feet revealed to his enemies — he had left his tabis by the entrance — these tsoles of his were not just bare of shoes but of ink as well, though, he had, been tattooed, head to toe he’d never been touched any lower than that.

The bodyguards let out cries of triumph, the belly vibrated with lucid and lurid imagery that mirrored their movements. showing Severin being held by his ankles upside down and swords driven through his heels to the hilts, then churned about and retracted — done

he was dropped, crippled, and allowed to bleed to death in that large white hall of audiences where the only blemish was caused by bullets ricocheting on the stone floor.

“Now, my Lady Shimmer, will you complete me”

She did not respond for a couple seconds, unused as he was to speak herself and not relay her commands through the voice of Severin. “No, for what reason should I do that?” her voice was awful, metallic and strange from being unused for many years. For the last six years when she had communicated only through the precision of her tattoo gun and the public relations officiation of Severin, and to him she had only thought — not spoken.

“If you won’t I will have you killed. It would not be pleasant.”

“But, if i do you will do that any way.”

“Indeed, but there is no need to argue fair lady, i have hired several profiler’s all of whom concluded that you as the consummate artist could not refrain from completing one final masterpiece before being sent to join your faithful disciple in the hereafter”

“It’s true” Shimmer assented, the emotion was unreadable.

“Get to work then, O I am bursting. now my ambition nears realization.”

She went to work, all but two of the bodyguards were dismissed, these were the two the belly showed chopping Shimmer’s head off and eviscerating her with their katanas.

This was a long job, 11 hrs, far into the night, a bottle of cold water next o her so she wouldn’t be dehydrated. as in all Shimmers work there was no discussion as to what she would do, she did not take specified commissions but only did as her aesthetic instincts dictated. for vergeance she could as have easily carved an oversized and ideogrammatic script on her

enemy’s upper torso with the words “Government Informant” but the idea never occurred to her, nor would it occur to anyone that she might; the primacy of art is such that none doubts it.

Pain is a deep design in this world. and should it be taken and remade cut-up and re-laid in brand new order, then reality is also so taken… for though reality may on it’s face show an incontrovertible expression it is merely an habitual one and with the slightest tuck of a lip lower or arche of a brow higher serenity becomes disdain or surprise. move far enough away in viewing what you think complete you’ll mistake it as only being unvarying.,

11 hrs, far into the night, from time. to time the thinner bodyguard enticed by curiosity, an aesthetic curiosity, stepped about from his guarding position and looked from behind Shimmer at his master’s chest and then, careful not to disturb her creative concentration with an emotive grunt, stepped back in place.

With painstaking resolve Shimmer’s design took form; at times a bodyguard, he was the thinner of the two, stepped out from his customary position and with inscrutable features examined the picture shimmer developed • a picture of Severin, enraged, a mighty foe”, tearing forth from the Yakuza lord’s torso.

It is always good to celebrate the worth of one’s foes, especially those already vanquished stifling his grunt of a appreciation and being careful to breath silently through his nostrils the thin bodyguard retreated back to his proper place.

Pain is like the melodic lilt in a storyteller’s voice when she wishes to lull you before any climactic actions, but more secretive is pain; who is such an aficionado of pain that the nature of the climax becomes apparent — we have failed as a society, for our greatest arts are funded on pain but we on endow no university programs for its study, and we cannot discuss the genres, cliches, and tropes of pain.

Such a long job, 10 hrs 59 minutes 44 seconds. her arms and back were like frozen iron with their ache, the bodyguards were wearied of standing guard, one of them, the, thinner, step approached from his accustomed spot to look from behind her as Shimmer applied the final stroke of pain.

The belly was a pinwheel of inchoate shapes coalescing into a black and white reproduction of that which now burst colorfully from the Illuminated Man’s chest, Severin, resurrected in consummate artistry and ink — tearing out past the flesh and bones of his usurper, like a buzzsaw jack in the box, like alien the tattooed hero exploded in blood from evil nativity; Severin stood whole and a live in the reception hall, his enemy collapsed backwards, the belly becoming just an irregular splotch of ink upon a hill of lard.

The bodyguards stood before him, they were both fans of Hong Kong Kung Fu movies and knew that in cases of such miraculous revivals it was incumbent on minor villains to look suitably dumbfounded…They looked suitably dumbfounded.

Severin now slowly lifted his left foot and then his right; so developed was Shimmer’s technique, her ability to boomerang pain, that the bottoms of his feet were immersed in tattoos, although she had drawn him only from the front.

Quickly and noiselessly Severin despatched the amazed, slow-witted bodyguards. then Shimmer and he stole from that compound under the cover of a blue-green night, “i was certain i was dead.” said Severin

“How can the servant be dead when his mistress yet lives? “ was the lovely-voiced thought that filled his mind,