Will in college, walking down some main strip just outside of campus, passing by a tattoo parlor….Will watching the piercer line a needle up through the big bay window, the red engraving of the shop title almost obscuring the view….The way he knows it’s a permanent sort of decoration, that he should shy away from it, he gets too much attention as it is…it’s only that his mind runs a comparison to the sticking pins he uses for insect specimens, the parallel it shows as the piercer pulls the new jewelry into place, threaded through eyebrow the same painful way he’s accidentally threaded fishing hooks into his thumb by not paying attention… his palms sweaty as he pushes open the door, the cool crisp scent of sterilized surgical steel filling his nose, the annoying clang of the bell alerting the employees to his presence…just his ears, he thinks, they’ll heal fast and his hair is long enough to cover them..