Iris in the ashes
The shadowless light cast a ghastly white circle on the operating table, and Emma smelled the charred odor coming from her left arm. It smelled like overcooked Christmas turkey, mixed with the pungent scent of medical alcohol. The nurse was using a laser to flatten the skin that had rolled over at her elbow joint, and the niggling sound reminded her of pine logs popping in the fireplace on Christmas Eve.
"Need two more shots of morphine?" The anesthesiologist in the blue mask asked a third time.
Emma stared at the metal reflections bobbing off the ceiling where her gauze-wrapped face was reflected. She reached out with her intact right hand and pulled off her breathing mask, "Save it for someone who needs it more, like my imposter corpse in the morgue."
The temperature in the operating room plummeted three degrees as Jocelyn, the tattoo artist, wheeled in her tool cart. The Russian woman always wore knee-high leather boots and a black eye patch over her right eye, which was said to be a souvenir from when she tattooed mafia leaders in Moscow prisons.
"Let's see the devil's work." Jocelyn lifted the sterile dressing and the rotting flesh was exposed to the cold air. Those dark red grooves snaked from collarbone to fingertip like God's random splash of work with melted wax oil.
Emma's nails dug into the edge of the operating table. She remembered the same touch-the taste of her fingertips sinking into the pine door panel of the studio that snowy night five years ago. The way Lucas had pinned Leah down in front of the Iris painting was more hideous than her festering wounds at the moment.
"I want it turned into a weapon." Emma's voice made the heart monitor beep shrilly, "Every scar a bullet, every inch of skin a torture device."
Jocelyn's tattoo needle buzzed like a viper's spit. As the first needle pierced the shoulder blade, Emma saw the surgical light morph into the crystal chandelier on the gallery's top floor. She'd come home early that day with her pregnancy labs in hand, only to hear a familiar gasp from the second-floor studio.
"Are you sure you want to pick Iris?" Jocelyn wiped the needle with a blood-stained glove, "This flower releases cyanide as it rots."
Emma laughed out loud through the excruciating pain. Of course she remembered that Leah always drew irises, saying they were "the perfect combination of death and desire." Right now the tattoo needle was outlining jagged stems along the burn scars, just like the night she hid behind the door and counted the number of times Leah's skirt swayed.
The memory began to ooze blood as the twenty-seventh needle pierced the radial artery. She saw herself shaking as she pressed the video button on her cell phone, and in the shot Lucas's hand was wandering over the iris pattern on Leah's back. It was the pattern he'd personally designed for her last Valentine's Day, and right now it was blooming on another woman's iris.
"You're bleeding." Jocelyn stopped abruptly. Dark red blood was dripping down the operating table, blooming into flowers on the tile floor.
Emma licked the fishy sweetness from the corner of her mouth. The taste was nothing compared to the tequila that had been poured down her throat that night-and as she sat paralyzed in the fire escape disinfecting her eyes with alcohol, a text message from Leah was vibrating in her pocket, "Remember to wear the silk nightgown I sent you to the Christmas Eve party tomorrow night."
The scalpel suddenly hit the floor with a crash. The nurse screams and backs away as Emma suddenly sits up and rips the IV tube out of her arm. She grabbed the indigo dye for her tattoo and splashed it on the mirror, a rushing fire emerging from the shattered reflection.
Memories began to burn uncontrollably.
The champagne-soaked silk nightgown was the first thing to catch fire, and the glass Leah had "accidentally" spilled was still stuck to her calf. Lucas's back disappeared into the smoke as he said he was going to get the fire extinguisher, while the unlocked door clicked. She'd always remember the smell as she crawled toward the terrace-Leah's Chanel N°5 mixed with the aroma of charred skin.
"You're killing my work." Jocelyn pinched her oozing wrist, an eerie light flashing in her one eye. The woman who'd tattooed scum with sewing needles in a Siberian prison was wearing an almost euphoric expression at the moment.
Emma continued over the hum of her analgesic pump, "Stab the stems of the flowers into the deepest part of the burns, in a way that reminds you of the texture of a roast."
As the tattoo needle pierced the festering wound for the fifty-ninth time, the monitor sounded a piercing alarm. Emma saw more images in the thrill of near-death: Leah wearing her blue diamond ring in an interview with a reporter, Lucas testifying in court about her tendency to self-immolate, the autopsy report of the accidental death in the safe...
"Time to change colors." Jocelyn suddenly lifted the bottom of the toolbox, and in the dark compartment lay three tubes of forbidden fluorescent paint. The phosphorus-containing contraband glowed a ghostly green in the darkness, like the ventilator indicator Emma had seen when she woke up in the ICU.
The anesthesiologist tries to block it, but is pinned in place by Emma's eyes. She was forging pain into a weapon, each new wound a future bullet fired at her enemies. The moment the fluorescent green seeped into the iris stamens, the power suddenly went out in the operating room.
In the darkness, Jocelyn's laugh sounded like a rusty hinge, "Know why you chose the iris? Its bulbs can sleep in the ashes for seven years."
Emma touched the glowing tattoo, something stirring under her skin. The power outage hadn't been an accident-she'd paid off the hospital electrician three days ago, and at this moment all the ad screens in Manhattan should be broadcasting the Lucas Foundation scandal.
But the real surprise was hidden in the tattoo paint.
Jocelyn took two steps back and suddenly said something in Russian. Emma looked at her left arm that was gradually lighting up, those fluorescent patterns reorganizing under her skin. When the emergency lights came back on, a series of numbers emerged from the festering scar - the very password to the account Lucas had hidden in the Swiss bank.
"You're crazier than I thought." Jocelyn removed her blood-stained rubber gloves, "But remember, Iris's vengeance toxin takes seven years to mature."
Emma raised her arm to the surgical light, the glowing tattoo projecting eerie totems on the ceiling. She finally burst out laughing, and the sound of her laughter startled the crows roosting outside the window. The birds would soon land on the terrace of Lucas's newly purchased mansion with bloodstained iris petals in their beaks.
The nurses would never know what happened in those five minutes when the power went out. Just as no one in the New York social scene had realized that Veronica, the gallerist who had mysteriously disappeared, was at that very moment allowing the sins of her enemies to take root in her skin.
As the last wound was covered by the tattoo, Emma felt the bump at her collarbone. That was the microcapsule that Jocelyn had buried, containing a computer virus powerful enough to paralyze an entire financial building. And the trigger switch was hidden where Lucas loved to kiss.
It was freezing rain the day she was discharged from the hospital, and Emma lit the bloody gauze on fire in the back alley of the hospital. The moment the flames went up, she heard an alert from her phone-Leah had just updated her INS with a photo of the blue diamond ring that was sparkling on her ring finger, with Lucas's newly purchased private island in the background.
"Enjoy your engagement present." Emma murmured into the firelight. She wrapped her trench coat tightly around her as she walked toward the Chelsea district, the tattoo on her left arm glowing a ghostly green under her raincoat. Those unformed iris buds hid twenty-three coordinates for revenge and seven murder scenarios.
Passing through Times Square, the giant screen was showing breaking news: a Swiss bank had been hacked and billions of dollars had disappeared. The camera swept over Lucas's ghastly white face, and he would never realize that his pupils were reflecting a glowing iris.