It starts in a park in the afternoon in Wisconsin, the narrator was eating pork with beans and a donut, the illustrated man arrives to talk to the narrator, the illustrated man begins to tell him his problems with the illustrations and tells him how he ended up tattooed by a witch of the future from his feet to his neck, after a while talking it gets dark and with some very bright stars, the illustrations of the man begin to move, the illustrated man tells the narrator that for anything in the world he should not look at the illustrations because in the right shoulder blade there are stories of the life of people in this case the narrator's life, the illustrated man falls asleep and the narrator begins to look at the right shoulder blade, he manages to see 18 stories of his life but he falls asleep, possibly if he had continued seeing he would have seen which and how his death was going to be.