He had called himself the dragon, he once told me that all he had wanted in life was one thing, the only thing that would have ever mattered, having how he feels on the inside match his appearance on the outside. His body was a work of art, he was inked head to toe, the tattoos being bright red scales, his toes being marked with ravenous claws, his back exposing long graceful wings, golden brown wings that could have been real but were not.

His tattoos were not ordinary needle and Indian ink, they were carved into his body with razor blades, I came with him once to watch as the artist created his dream, the artist had drawn the scales on his skull, then he placed the razor deep into the skulls skin swiftly outlining his draft. He dug a small tipped Q-tip into the black ink and jammed it into the outline before it swelled, leaving a mixture of hypnotizing color, the bleeding continued as the black ink set in. I couldn’t have imagined how painful this had felt, but he had sat there dazed, smiling as if nothing was going on. At night he would stand in front of his full-length mirror touching and observing his skin, but there was still sadness lurking behind his red eyes. The world had been his oyster, but yet was so cruel, the tattoo had been the only time I had seen him smile, through the pain comes happiness.