Needles dipped in India ink. We're used to the way it stings as it presses under our skin. We read Frankenstein three times that summer... funny how everything makes sense directly after it becomes irrelevant... like the line we liked to quote but weren't sure why, "Nothing is more painful to the human mind than after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction in certainty which follows & deprives the soul both of hope and fear." Or the way we swore it was too good to be true.