Skin

My curiosity is killing me: "Skin" by Shelley Jackson. One word tattooed on one person. 2095 words in the entire story. I've been hearing about this thing for months, maybe years, and I've been dying to read the whole thing, but only participants, it seems, will ever get to read the whole thing. I like the writing in this New York Times piece on it:

For others, the motives are social: Jackson is encouraging her far-flung words to get to know each other via e-mail, telephone, even in person. (Imagine the possibilities. A sentence getting together for dinner. A paragraph having a party.)

and

(...) when a participant meets his or her demise, Jackson vows, she will try to attend that person's funeral. But the 41-year-old author understands that some of her 2,095 collaborators, many of whom are in their 20's, might outlive her. If she dies first, she says, she hopes several of them will come to her funeral and make her the first writer ever to be mourned by her words.