Destiny McMahon ran a hand through her long, bright red hair as she pushed open the door of the High Voltage Tattoo Shop, owned by the legendary Kat Von D. She was literally fresh from a stint in rehab, having only been let out mere hours before.
She apprehensively approached the front desk and spoke in a small voice to a heavily tattooed woman with piercings through both cheeks and was busy painting her nails a vibrant pink.
"Uh...hello?"
The woman looked up abruptly, almost up-ending her bottle of nail-polish.
"Hi there, welcome to High Voltage. I'm Pixie. Can I help you?"
Destiny cleared her throat.
"I have an appointment with Kat. My name's Destiny."
"Wow, that's such a pretty name!" Pixie exclaimed, glancing down at the appointment book. "Kat's just finishing up with another client at the moment. You can either have a seat on the gold couches, skate on the ramp, or dance on the pole while you wait."
Pixie smiled at Destiny, who walked over and took a seat on the plush gold sofa by the window. She was nervous. Not of the tattoo. God knew she had plenty of experience with needles. She was just a little apprehensive because the discussion would inevitably turn to why she was getting the tattoo in the first place. She knew she needed to talk about it to someone, but she was frightened that she might burden them, or put them off with her sob story. She knew, however, that the topic would be raised while she was in the chair. She knew this because LA Ink was pretty much all she had watched when she was in rehab. It was what had made her want to commemorate her experiences in this way. She loved the show, and the idea of a tattoo, but that didn't mean she couldn't be nervous.
"Destiny?" she heard a voice call.
Her very name had always struck her as the height of irony. Destiny. Her mother used to tell when she was a little girl that they had named her that because they knew she was destined to do great things, but, as the years went by, her mother was proved wrong. Destiny's only purpose or ambition in life had been to sit around in a drug-dealer's house in a totally zombified state because she was just too fucked up to do anything else.
Destiny glanced up when she heard her name. Kat Von D was walking towards her, sketch pad in hand, ready to draw up the design.
"Hi, I'm Kat." the heavily tattooed woman introduced herself, offering Destiny her hand.
"Destiny." she said, with a small smile.
"So do you have an idea of what you want?" Kat asked, pencil poised at the ready on her sketch pad.
"Yeah." said Destiny, sitting forward on the couch. "I wanted to get a portrait of this."
She held out a photo of a small girl, no older than three years old.
"But I want her to have wings."
"Like angel wings?" Kat asked as she began to sketch out a concept.
"Yeah."
"Okay, sweet. Well, this will take me a few minutes to draw up, so if you wanna, like, go grab a coffee or some food or something that's cool." Kat said, standing up.
"Thanks. See you soon, I guess."
Fifteen minutes later, Destiny walked back into High Voltage.
"Destiny!" Kat exclaimed. "You ready?"
Destiny nodded and headed over to Kat's work station, where Kat put a stencil on her arm.
"Go take a look in the mirror." she told her.
Destiny wandered over and looked briefly in the mirror.
"It's perfect." she said.
"You're sure?" Kat asked, wanting to make sure she was entirely certain before they began.
Destiny nodded.
"Okay, jump into the chair then." she told her, gesturing towards the tattoo chair in front of her.
Destiny did as Kat said, watching as Kat prepped the needle and ink.
"You got any other tattoos?" Kat asked as she worked.
"Yeah, I've got a whole back piece and a half-sleeve on the other arm." she replied, raising the sleeve slightly to show her.
"Oh, cool." said Kat. "Okay, I'm gonna start now. You're gonna feel a little prick."
But Destiny barely felt it at all. She was so used to needles that they didn't even bother her anymore.
"So who's the girl in the picture?" Kat asked finally.
"Uh...me." said Destiny simply.
"Really? What made you wanna get a self-portrait?"
"Just to remind myself of who I used to be and how important it is for me to get back there." Destiny explained.
"Sounds like there's a story behind it." Kat observed.
They heard the bell at the front door jingle as someone entered and stood there talking to Pixie.
Destiny merely nodded, taking a deep breath before she opened her mouth.
"I left home when I was fifteen." she began.
"Where was home?" Kat asked.
"New York. My parents were always great to me. I was an only child so I suppose I was always spoiled. Then, when I was fourteen, I met my ex-boyfriend, who was four years older than me and heavily into drugs. So, naturally, I started experimenting. When my parents found out, it broke their hearts to watch what I was doing to myself. They talked about putting me into a clinic and, you know, I was young and I thought I knew it all. So I took off. Met up with my boyfriend and a few of our friends one night and we all got high and decided to just get in the car and drive."
"And that's how you ended up in LA?" Kat asked as she worked on Destiny's arm.
Destiny nodded again.
"How long ago was that?"
"Almost ten years."
Kat raised her eyebrows.
"Wow, long time to have been away from home. That'd make you... 24?"
"Yeah." Destiny agreed.
"Have you, like, spoken to your parents since?"
Destiny shook her head.
"After a few years, I wanted to, but I figured they wouldn't wanna hear from me after what I did to them. And anyway, by that stage I was so addicted that I could barely form a coherent thought, let alone hold onto it for more than five seconds."
"Wow, dude, that's intense." Kat said with awe in her voice.
"Yeah. But anyway, a few months ago, my boyfriend died from an overdose, and that was when I knew it was time to clean up."
"Is that the same guy you came out here with?" Kat asked.
"Sure is."
"Holy shit, you guys were together for ages!" Kat exclaimed.
Destiny shrugged.
"It wasn't what you'd call a functional relationship. The drugs held us together. If it weren't for them we would have fallen apart a long time ago. But we were so out of our heads that we just kept going with the flow." she explained to a wide-eyed Kat.
"So are you, like, clean now or...?" she trailed off.
"As a matter of fact, I am. I just got out of rehab this morning."
Kat glanced up from Destiny's arm momentarily to give her an incredulous look.
"Oh my God, really?"
Destiny nodded again.
"I decided this was the first thing I'd do when I got out because, when I was in rehab, LA Ink was pretty much all I watched."
"Aww." said Kat with a smile. "I'm honoured."
Ville Valo sighed as he pushed open the door to his friend Kat's tattoo shop. He could see that Kat was busy with a red-headed girl, so he walked up to the desk, tapping his fingers on it until Pixie looked up from her magazine.
"Oh, my God, Ville!" she exclaimed when she saw him, leaning over the counter to embrace him and kiss him on both cheeks. "How've you been? How's Jonna? What are you doing here?"
Ville tried not to let the smile slip from his face at the sound of her name. The pain was still fresh in his heart.
"I've been better, Pixie." he said with a forced smile which he was sure must have looked more like a pained grimace. "Jonna and I broke up. I'm here to recover."
He watched as Pixie's face fell comically. She really was like a cartoon character and it never failed to amuse him.
"Aww, Ville, baby, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed embracing him again.
"It's okay, I'll live." he assured her, though he wasn't really sure if he believed himself. "I'm just here to talk to Kat."
Pixie glanced over her shoulder at Kat's work station where she was still busy with the pretty red-head with the funny name.
"She's with a client at the moment. Would you like to take a seat and wait?"
He smiled and nodded, walking over to the famous gold couches and collapsing onto one of them. He ignored the pile of magazines beside him. He had never been one for idle gossip and that was all magazines these days were good for. Instead he took in his surroundings. Eventually, the young girl in Kat's tattoo chair began to talk. He simply listened from the couch, her voice carrying over to him quite clearly.
The girl's story was heart breaking. She had been a teenage runaway, coming to Los Angeles at the age of fifteen and falling into the drug world, where she had stayed until until a few months previously and the untimely death of her boyfriend. According to her, she had then checked herself into rehab, where she had been released from that very morning, and come straight into High Voltage for a tattoo.
Ville listened intently to the whole story. Though he could only see the back of her head from where she was sitting, she had the voice of an angel. It was soft and slightly sad, but at the same time, strong and unwavering.
Ville smiled to himself as he saw Kat wipe the girls arm off and lead her over to the mirror.
He squinted his eyes to catch a look at the tattoo in the mirror. It was a colour portrait of a small girl with angel wings sprouting from her back. His eyes traveled up her slim form to her face. He was immediately struck by her damaged beauty. She had striking brown eyes that were somewhat sunken, which he supposed was thanks to the drugs. She had pale skin and full pink lips. Her face was slightly blemished, but the marks were fading fast. With or without them, she was still breath-taking. The only thing about her was her shocking red hair. It suited her, but it still looked tacky.
He watched as she turned around and embraced Kat.
"Thank you so much!" he heard her say, happiness filling her tone.
"Come back anytime." Kat laughed, returning the shorter woman's hug. "What's next on your post-rehab agenda?"
The girl brushed a hand through her hair.
"A change of hair colour. I was so spaced when I put this through it that I didn't realize how cheap and nasty it looked."
Ville heard Kat laugh again.
"well, I wasn't gonna say anything, but you can definitely do better."
The girl pulled a face and laughed as well, smoothing down her Motley Crue tank top and leopard print mini-skirt. She picked a stray fibre from her black tights and knocked the heels of her boots together like the girl in 'The Wizard of Oz'.
Just then, Kat looked over in Ville's direction.
"Ville!" she exclaimed, grabbing the girl by the hand and pulling her over to where Ville sat.
He stood up and allowed Kat to embrace her.
"Destiny, this is Ville Valo from the band HIM." Kat introduced him.
Destiny nodded, her cheeks blushing almost the same colour as her hair as Ville smiled down at her.
"Destiny." he said, offering his hand to her. "Beautiful name for a beautiful lady. I like your tattoo."
He gestured down at her brand new ink and she blushed an even darker shade of red.
"Thanks." she mumbled.
The three of them stood there for a while, engaged in idle chit-chat, during which time Destiny opened up a little more and talked and laughed with them, regaling them with stories of people on drugs making fools of themselves. Everyone there knew that these stories shouldn't be funny, but they couldn't help but laugh. By the time she said her goodbyes, Ville had grown somewhat attached to the diminutive red-head. He was intrigued by her.
She extended her hand for him to shake before she left, but instead he lifted it to his lips and gave it a light kiss, making her blush again.
"Farewell, Destiny. I have a feeling we'll meet again, love." he said with a wink.
She giggled.
"I hope so." she replied boldly, turning around and heading out the door, the bell jingling as it closed behind her.
"Kat." he said to his friend, green eyes still on Destiny's retreating back. "Give me that girl's number."
Destiny walked away, internally kicking herself. She was fairly certain that she had just made a fool of herself in front of her favourite singer of all time. Oh well. No time to dwell on it now. Contrary to his remark just before she had left, she would probably never see him again. Now it was off to the beauty salon to get this horrific red out of her hair. She remembered looking at it for the first time when she was sober and realizing just how awful it looked. She had been mortified, but she hadn't gotten around to changing it. No one in rehab cared anyway. Everyone looked awful in their own way in that place, so nobody even looked twice at her travesty of a hair colour.
She hoisted her gold shoulder bag higher onto her shoulder and placed on her over-sized sunglasses. Even though it was almost sunset, she always wore her sunglasses when she was outside. In the tattoo shop she was safe, but out here, people were judgmental, and her sunken eyes were the number one clue to the secrets of her past.
Pulling her leather jacket tighter around her thin form, she shivered. She really couldn't remember the last time she had had this much weight on her. Drugs had suppressed her appetite, so she had been emaciated since the age of fifteen. Then, in rehab, after the withdrawals were over, she began to eat again and was slowly getting to a healthy weight again.
Traffic whizzed by her as she walked down the street in the fading light. She suddenly realized that she had lived here for ten years. Ten years in which she had been stoned out her mind all the time. This city was home now, but she barely knew it at all.