SUBROSA
Preface
And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last.
Melville, Moby-Dick
It was not an autopsy. The men were not doctors. Carcasses of beef hung from hooks near the table. The men at the table cut the body into parts with a bandsaw. As one cut off limbs, the other put them in plastic bags. Now the cutter severed a forearm from an elbow. I could see the tattoo of a rose on the severed forearm without a hand as it was placed in a plastic bag.
I woke up, but the dream kept running in my head. They put the pieces in plastic bags and stuck them in a dumpster. The pieces of Jim Fick.
It was the rose tattoo. Fick had that rose tattoo on his forearm. Someone was looking for him. It's my fault he's dead.