Amber_18's Fan Fiction "A Walk to Remember"

"The Tattoo"

I walked across the street from the place I parked my car. In Beaufort, there is one tattoo artist and he is the scariest and richest man in town. He owned the largest house in the center of town and owned three Camaros which said, "Psycho Jack Tattoo" on the side. Everyone stepped away every time they saw him, but he was the only place you could get a tattoo for fifty miles. So, everyone went there. Dean got his ugly joker tattoo there and Belinda went there the day she turned eighteen to get a rosebud on her lower back.

I opened the door and walked up the stairs. I walked into a waiting room where large pictures full of designs for tattoos cluttered the walls. I took one of the books and sat down and looked through all of them. Nothing really struck me and I approached the receptionist. She wore a tank top and tattoos went down her arms on both sides. She had a nose ring and her dark hair was streaked with blue.

"Can I help you honey?" She asked as she flipped through a book.

"I wanted to get a tattoo," I told the receptionist.

" Do you have an appointment?" The lady asked, as she started to flip through a black appointment book.

"No, I'm just a walk in," I told her. She got up from her chair and went into the back. She came back out and pointed to the back.

"Psycho Jack just finished with somebody and our two o'clock chickened out," She said. "You can go in the back."

I took a big gulp and walked in the back. Psycho Jack was hunched over a tray. I walked toward him. He turned around and I almost gasped. I never saw him up close before, but just from a distance. He had all of three teeth and his hair was fashioned into a scraggly mullet. The man was a frequent shopper at the only leather shop in town and his whole wardrobe consisted of the fine material.

"Are you Eddie Carmon?" He said, sensing I was standing there.

"No, the receptionist said that your two o'clock chickened out so you can fit me in," I said.

He turned around and gave me an up and down. "Do you have a driver's license on you?"

"Yeah, sure," I said as I pulled out my wallet. As I opened my wallet, I stared at my wedding picture. Jamie was so beautiful that day. I took out my license and gave it to him.

"Hum, Landon Carter?"

"Yeah."

"You married Jamie Sullivan last June didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did."

"I just wanted to tell you, Jamie was an extraordinary girl," Psycho Jack commented. "Every time I saw her, she gave me that smile of hers. She brightened my day every time I saw her. She had that effect on everyone. I'm sorry for your loss."

I looked down and tried to hold back my tears. I looked back up and said, "How much is it going to cost?"

"Well, it depends on what you want," Psycho Jack said. I pulled out a piece of paper. I opened it up and pointed to what I wanted. "You want to tattoo this?"

"Yeah, if you can do it," I said.

"Of course. A tattoo about this size will cost about fifty bucks."

"Fair," I said. I took off my shirt and showed him the place that I wanted to get it. I went on my stomach on the chair and he began. First, he traced the tattoo and then put the ink over the red lines. He gave me a mirror so I could see my back.

"How does it look?" Psycho Jack asked me.

"It looks fine," I said. "Let's get it over with."

He started to tattoo it into my skin. The whole time I thought of Jamie. This was for her. The tattoo didn't hurt as much as when she past away three months, four days, and two hours ago. It was just physical pain that would heal and feel better in a few weeks. The pain from Jamie's death will stay with me forever although it might ease after a while. Her face played over and over in my mind while I was on that table, listening to the drilling on my skin that Psycho Jack was doing. When he was finished, I looked at it again with the mirror. He had tattooed it in the middle of my upper back. The area around the tattoo was dark red and in the middle of the blot of red, was the ink of the tattoo. It was the outline of a butterfly, about the size of the temporary one I gave to Jamie. And in the middle of the outline, was her name in her own handwriting. I thanked the man, paid him, filled out the paper work, and left.