Tory J. Woodard

For your birthday, your friends gave you money for a tattoo. Your first! Your parents were never in favor of you getting one, which is why you never got one. And now you're sitting in "Skin 'n Soul," a tattoo studio on a dark side street in New York City. The smell of stale cigarette smoke hangs in the air, and the furniture looks worn. Posters and photos of motorcycles and... the Hells Angels hang on the walls. God, what have you gotten yourself into? But your friends said Skin 'n Soul is the best tattoo shop! The customers around you only reinforce your feeling of being wrong: bikers, women in extremely revealing clothing, and men with more tattoos than hair. And the woman at the reception? Pierced, tattooed, and with hair as colorful as the rainbow, a beer bottle in her hand. Just as you decide to leave the studio, you hear a crash, and a tall man with tattoos and a look that could kill drags another man out of one of the back rooms. "I already told you, I don't give loans for this. Either you pay everything in full, or I'll take your teeth as a down payment!" The whole room falls silent as Tory ushers the whimpering man to the door. You swallow hard. Oh, this could be something...