Credit: Justin Randall

A different man's voice, younger, higher register, syncopated speech. "I'm tellin' you, this woman had to have been high on meth, maybe. Out of her freakin' mind-" An indistinct interruption emerges from background babble.

"Sure you can see more pictures, I can do just about any tattoo you can think of. Dragons? Sure, do a tonne of 'em.

"Anyway, I mean, she wanted a tattoo removed and, um, that's pretty normal. People get tattoo regret all the time, come in here, and ask me for a magic potion to make it all go away. So, she comes in here asking to have this tattoo removed and, I mean, she was talkin' normal and everything so if she was high it was pretty good stuff.

She said she got this tattoo from a friend of hers and I said, 'So he's a tattoo artist?' and she says no and looks confused. Well, at this point I guess it's an unlicensed tattoo, right? So maybe that's why she won't come clean.

"And get this- OK, yeah, we can do piercing, too. Yeah, check out these naval rings, you bring your girlfriend here for Valentine's Day, right?

"Sorry about the interruptions, man. Customers. You know. So, but get this now, I asked her just how big this tattoo was that she wanted to fade and how deep the ink was and this loony tune chick just dropped her dress, right there in the middle of the shop, man. This dragon tat went from her collarbone all the way down and wound around her to the ankle.

"She said she just got the tat, like two days ago, but there wasn't any Vaseline on it. No redness, no scabbing. Must be a new way of tattooing to leave the skin so perfect. And the colour was such a deep black with undertones of blue. I didn't know why she was upset about such a perfect piece of body art, except maybe it was too big.

"Only thing was, the artist that did her tat? He was a twisted son of a bitch. Got all the scales and everything perfect, the drawing was so good I swear I saw it move under her skin. Thing was, it didn't have reptilian eyes but human ones. That was just wrong."

A questioning babble.

"No, I mean, wrong. Like I felt totally uneasy looking at it. Pretty soon you could talk yourself into believing it was alive. I got her some cream for it pretty quick after that, I'll tell ya. Didn't want her to have to face this thing in the mirror every morning, know what I mean?"

Hovering over the machine, hunting the buttons to stop it, I'm afraid that it might stop playing for good. Did I hear what I think ... Before I can discover the button I need, the hiss breaks to a click, and a pleasant male voice speaks, words clipped tight with tension.

"I am afraid, as I add my account to the evidence gathered on this tape, that I may be witness to the impending extinction of man. It has been barely a month since the first case. The autopsy of 23-year-old Richard Tellar, a tattoo artist known as 'The Chinaman.' Since that time I have delved into this mystery, first as a curiosity then with deep apprehension.

"I have tried to make sense of the occurrences, interviewing people involved only to see their dead bodies brought to my morgue shortly after. Ingrid Jordan is the fourth. Her doctor, Dr. Jacob Westheim, M.D. is on the slab next to her, the fifth victim. The interval is growing shorter. It has been four hours since I examined their cadavers. My official report was as clear as I could make it but is inadequate to our current needs. Further measures will need to be taken although I'm not sure I have time to find out what those measures are.

"In Ingrid's case the dermis appeared to have been burned away to the hypodermis in a swathe from her neck, around her body, and continuing to her ankle. Three wounds across her throat are shallow and, unlike the case of Doris Marshall, do not appear to have been the cause of death. Her only other injury was a small cut covered by a bandage. She was the first victim so far whose body was mutated by this phenomenon. Her hands were slightly misshapen, the fingers and small bones longer than normal. Her face also appears to have undergone subtle structural change shortly before death.

"In Dr. Westheim's case, the dermis had been similarly burned away in a strip that started at the base of his spine, widened as it ascended his back, and draped over his left shoulder, leaving fatty tissue exposed. He had lethal doses of Demerol in his system.

"His hands were similarly mutated, as though a disease had lengthened and wizened the fingers. The nails were thick and very long. His face was also slightly misshapen, as though the jaw had lengthened."