Jackrabbit Skin

Swan is a tattoo artist who has recently landed in a small community in the California high desert, where everybody knows everybody and nobody says much. When a local man named Kurt asks her for a memorial tattoo for his late wife, she takes the job — over the quiet warnings of her neighbours, who tell her not to feed his grief.

Kurt keeps coming back for more ink. Session by session, the story he tells about his wife shifts, and what actually happened to her begins to work its way to the surface.

Ivy Pochoda's short story is part of the Never Tell collection of Amazon Original Stories, and it carries her characteristic interest in desert margins, damaged people, and the violence that sits just under an ordinary life.