Everything was so ugly. The squalid roach-infested public-housing shell where you grew up; the jaundiced crackheads in the halls and the tarry-veined smack addicts on the corner; the ammo casings on the school playground. Ugly. The Barbie-doll coloring-book world you wanted was a lie. Everything was ugly and nothing could ever change.

But you could change yourself. You sat in your room and poked needle after needle into your flesh. Then you connected the dots with an X-Acto knife. Pretty.

They took you to the hospital and some woman who tried to talk to you, but you had nothing more to say. Not with words, anyway. You ran away and offered yourself as apprentice to a tattoo artist. The grizzled ex-biker laughed at first, but when he saw your desire and your designs he agreed to take you on. You learned everything you could, and eventually opened your own studio. Your fame spread by word of mouth, and soon you acquired a regular clientele.

Then the customer came into your studio. He disrobed, and you gasped in awe. The designs sheathing his body had to have been created by the Michelangelo of your craft. But you felt intimidated and unworthy when he asked you to create a dragon tattoo on one of his few areas of bare flesh. You also saw this as a challenge, and you performedyour magnum opus on his skin. When you finally needled in the last scale, you could have sworn the dragon opened its eyes and breathed.

Because it did. The tattoo expanded, became a bas-relief, then an actual statue of living, hissing, undulating flesh rising from the client's chest. You staggered back in shock, only to be restrained by a shimmering, multi-colored claw. The dragon's maw moved in synch with the client's mouth as he - it - explained. This had been a test, and you had passed. You would now have eternity to express yourself.