door shut, and it took a few seconds for Soo-hyun’s eyes to adjust to the dark. The building’s first floor had been cleared out during the renovation—an open space but for a small kitchen in the rear corner and the load-bearing columns spaced evenly throughout. The scent of artificial cinnamon hung heavy in the air, a product of the candles that burned and flickered along shelves that lined the walls. The floor was littered with throw pillows and blankets, like a child’s sleepover that had never been tidied up.
Soo-hyun followed Andrea up a steep staircase, away from the sweet cloying scent and the dim lighting. The smell on the second floor was of harsh antiseptics, and the landing opened onto a small boardroom. Kali and her inner circle sat around a black table, lit brightly from above with humming fluorescent tubes. Kali sat on an ornate, carved wooden throne, cushioned in velvet. The others sat on plastic chairs. Kali stood and motioned for Soo-hyun to take the chair at the far end of the table, while Andrea sat at her right hand.
“I thought you would never join us,” Kali said, with a smile tugging at her lips. “You wouldn’t have been the first to respond to the call of enlightenment with fear and trepidation.”
“No, it’s not that at all,” Soo-hyun said, too quickly, as they sat down, “I was just waiting for someone to open the door.”
“Always waiting, never doing. That is the problem with so many people.” Kali let her eyes drift across the table before landing on Red, seated at her left, cracking his knuckles, unable to sit still. “Did you wait for someone to open the door, Red?”
“Fuckin’ kicked it in,” he said.
“You thought I was being attacked, and in a way I was. I was attacking myself.” Kali put a foot on the throne, and lifted her gray dress, revealing more and more of her long, pale legs until, just past her knee, the white skin gave way to stark black ink: a circle on her inner thigh. “I tattooed myself. I was determined to draw a perfect circle on my skin, with no guidelines, no stencil. I started small, and when the circle proved uneven, I would draw it larger and larger. I would have covered my whole leg in that quest for perfection, but Red stopped me. Found me screaming in frustration at my own failings. He didn’t know it at the time, but he was teaching me an important lesson: perfection is not something we attain in this skin or on it.”
She dropped her foot to the floor and the dress fell with it, covering her flesh once more. She sat on her throne.
“When I finally stopped myself, I could still feel the tattoo gun buzzing in my hand; a phantom vibration.” She closed her eyes and clenched her fist loosely in front of her face. “I can still feel it. I can still hear the steady buzz of the machine.”
Kali opened her eyes and stared at Soo-hyun, the pale blue of them reaching down the long table, as though there were only the two of them, everything else fell away.
“Do you know why people began to tattoo themselves?” Kali asked.
Soo-hyun tried to speak but found their mouth dry. They licked their lips quickly and shook their head.
“We needed to dominate our totemic animals,” Kali said. “We could worship them, or we could hunt them; eat their flesh and wear their skins. But these acts were only temporary—the flesh and skin would pass. By burning their bones and making ink from the charcoal, we could trap the animals, the spirits, the totems, beneath our skin. But we didn’t stop there.
“Our vanquished enemies, our dead lovers, our lost children, all these people could be held forever beneath the skin. We can take their bodies, their power, and insert it into our own selves, one needle prick at a time.”
Kali held her hand out to Andrea, and the young girl placed a small glass pot onto her palm, the ink inside so dark it seemed to absorb all the light in the room so that the jar was the only thing Soo-hyun could focus on.
“This is my mother,” Kali said. “She birthed me, she loved me, she raised me, and she failed me. Our parents always fail us, and we are bound to fail them if we ever wish to become our own people. They have children to continue their line, their name, their genes,