by Mark Carver
He rolled his eyes as that annoying voice piped up inside of him again, like he knew it would.
Cameron, buddy, you can’t be seriously considering this.
Cameron angrily stabbed his macaroni.
Well, what if I am?
The voice practically shouted.
Have you lost your mind? Why on earth would you want to TATTOO YOUR FACE? To prove what? That you’re not a wimp who chickens out when an attractive girl gets a little frisky? Think about this! Everyone’s going to think you’re a freak or an ex-con or something. Think of the stares and discrimination you’ll run into. Do you want to go grocery shopping looking like a barbarian?
Cameron’s eyes were dark as he glared at his reflection.
Yes.
The voice was speechless.
Cameron shoved another forkful of macaroni and cheese into his mouth and chewed harshly.
That’s what he wanted. He couldn’t put his finger on it before, but it was clear now. He was tired of being just the blacksmith. He wanted to be the barbarian.
He pushed his dinner away and rose to his feet.
I make instruments of death my bare hands. I’m not a meek, polite suburbanite who goes jogging every day and TiVo’s American Idol. I’m not like the rest of these people.
He looked outside but he could only see the kitchen and himself in the windows. For a moment, his nerve faltered. Then he clenched his jaw in determination.
Who cares what they might think?
He paused.
Who cares what she might think?
He didn’t answer to anybody. He wasn’t an office drone or retail worker who had to keep up appearances.
He was tired of being a wimp. He knew he was, even if no one else did. A wimp who was uncomfortable around women, who liked staying at home with his beer and heavy metal, who didn’t have any best friends, just chums to play poker or get tattooed with. A wimp who pretended he was cool just because he made weapons in his backyard and drove a motorcycle. A wimp who was losing money and respect to that media-whore charlatan on the magazine cover.
Cameron closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He felt like he was on the precipice of the first hill of a roller coaster. He wanted to be there, but it was still terrifying. After a few measured breaths, he forced the fog of emotion and euphoria to dissipate and let the sunshine of logic warm his mind.
What would happen if he went through with this? He would look incredible, for one thing. He would also give old folks heart attacks and make mothers cling to their children when he would go out in public.
What about his business? He thought hard for a moment. Actually, people would think it was pretty awesome. And think of how he would look on the centerfold poster in BladeSmith.
A sly smile crept across his face. Yeah…
Electricity raced through his nerves. He bolted to the den and grabbed his camera. He mounted it on the tripod and stepped back a few yards. He took a few pictures of his face from different angles, then plugged the camera’s USB wire into the computer.
He usually used the $2,000 state-of-the-art design program for work, but he was on a different kind of creative mission now. He loaded his photos onto the program’s clipboard and shoved the keyboard aside to make room for the digital stylus and drawing pad. With careful strokes that were as crisp and fine as if they were drawn with ink on paper, he watched his vision come to life.
His eyes gleamed with the glow of the computer screen.
“Oh man…oh man…”
****
When Cameron opened his eyes the next morning, his thoughts immediately flitted to last night’s burst of insanity. He stared up at the ceiling for a few minutes, and he let out a small chuckle.
Really. Tattoo my face…come on…
He rolled out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Conan followed behind him like a butler ready to help his master with his toilette.
Cameron rubbed his eyes as he flicked on the light switch. He glanced in the mirror and froze.
The insanity came flooding back.
He took a step forward and peered closely at the image hovering above the sink. He didn’t see what it was; he saw what it was missing. Just like last night in the kitchen window.
Where was this coming from? He had been perfectly content with his face up till now. And he still had plenty of available skin below the neck. So why the face?
He stared at himself as if he were bewitched. He saw it…dark shapes twisting around his eye, sharp spikes radiating away and tracking down his cheek.
It was awesome.
He shook his head to clear away the ridiculous vision.
You can’t tattoo your face, man. You just can’t. Now let it go.
He looked at Conan standing in the doorway. The dog never came in the bathroom, just like he never entered the workshop. He stared up at Cameron with a blank expression.
Cameron turned back to the mirror, staring keenly at his reflection. His heart was beating rapidly and he felt strangely anxious, as if a tattoo needle was hovering above him.
Well, if you insist on turning yourself into a freak, at least take a while to think about it. Don’t do something that you’ll regret later on. Though you’ll regret this no matter when you do it.
It was sound advice. A good tattoo is never the result of a rushed decision, and it would be best to let this idea simmer for awhile.
Cameron smirked and shook his head. Am I seriously considering this?
After a quick shower and breakfast for himself and Conan, he headed out the back door to the workshop. He had a delivery to make to a well-known weapons shop in Pomona. He wrapped the sword in careful packaging and slung it over his shoulder. It was such a nice day, it would be criminal to waste it in the confines of a car. He remembered hearing somewhere that bikers referred to cars as “cages.” On a day like this, that was a very appropriate term.
As he wheeled his motorcycle out of the garage, he glanced warily towards Mindy’s house. He didn’t know why he was leery of coming in contact with her. She didn’t seem upset or disappointed when he left last night, and it’s not like they were an item or anything. He didn’t have any obligation to her feelings. If they were both on different pages, that was her problem, not his.
Is that so, hotshot? So who’s thinking about scarring his face just to prove that he’s really a barbarian?
Cameron frowned. Shut up.
The motorcycle purred smoothly as he headed out of the driveway onto the street. The precision tuning was almost musical, and he smiled to himself. He didn’t need a big, lumbering chopper that rumbled on the verge of stalling out. To prove it to himself, he revved the engine and laid down a patch of rubber in front of Mindy’s house.
His heart fluttered. What if she saw that?
He clenched his teeth as he sped down the road. Let her think what she wants. He wasn’t going to goose-step around her feelings.
The wind whipped at his clothes as he zipped past slow-moving cages and raced out onto the highway.
He thought of Chucky. What would he say about his crazy idea?
And would he be able to help him set up an appointment with Ivan?
****
When he returned that evening, he bounced over the curb a little too fast as he sped into his driveway and the jolt caused him to rise out of his seat a little bit. As he shut off the engine, he thought he heard someone laughing, but it was difficult to tell with the helmet on.
He turned to his left, towards Mindy’s house. He pulled off his helmet and squinted in the setting sun.
Mindy was kneeling down in the bed of geraniums, hard at work digging up the long-dead flowers.
“Take it easy there,” she said with a smile. “You looked like a cowboy trying to break in a mustang.”
Cameron felt sheepish and irritated, though he didn’t really know why.
“Yeah, I, uh, get a bit too enthusiastic sometimes.”
“Most men do,” she said with a wink.
<
br /> “Um…okay.”
There was a pause for a moment and Mindy exhumed the roots of a withered patch of flowers.
“Look, Cameron…”
Cameron’s stomach tightened. Oh great, here it comes…
“…I hope you don’t have a bad feeling about me because of last night. I really am your friend, and I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Cameron watched her with a blank expression.
“So anyway,” she said as she resumed her digging, “anytime you feel up for it, we could hang out again. You know, maybe a barbecue or something. It’d be a shame to let all this beautiful sunshine go to waste.”
“It’s California. There’s always sunshine.”
Mindy’s eyes dropped, and she didn’t say anything in reply. Cameron knew he sounded harsh but he wasn’t going to change his tone.
Oh, look who’s the big bad barbarian now? You don’t need a facial tattoo; just act like a jerk all the time and people will get the message.
Cameron hopped off the motorcycle and started to wheel it towards the garage. He glanced at Mindy huddling in the dirt, her face shadowed by her wide-brimmed hat. He felt something prick at his emotional shell and it popped like a bubble.
“Mindy.”
She looked up.
Cameron cleared his throat. “I cook a mean T-bone. If you’ve got time this weekend, maybe we can throw something together.”
Her face brightened like the sun emerging from the clouds. “That’d be great. I’ll definitely make some time this weekend.”
Cameron agreed with a nod and a small smile. As he parked the bike in the garage, he heard that irritating voice again.
Come on man, why are you being such a drag? Just let your guard down for once. She’s just your neighbor, and she wants to be friendly. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it doesn’t mean anything, at least not yet.
Cameron dropped his helmet into a basket. But it will later. At least for her. He opened the kitchen door and stepped inside.
How do you know that? And how do you know how you’ll feel? You’re thirty-two years old but you live like a grouchy old man. Like you said, this is California. Just chill, man. Don’t go carving your face or anything stupid like that just to prove a point that no one’s interested in anyway.
Cameron glanced around the kitchen, a little surprised that Conan wasn’t waiting to greet him.
I want to do this for me. I’m not making a statement to the world or anything.
The sarcastic reply almost made him wince.
Psshh. Yeah right.
He peered around the island in the kitchen and saw where Conan’s food and water bowl were resting on the floor. But no dog.
“Conan! Here, boy!”
He waited for a moment, expecting to hear heavy feet padding on the hardwood floors. Nothing. Only silence.
“Conan? Where are you, buddy?”
He tried to calm the rising current of worry that welled up inside him as he walked through the kitchen and into the living room. He was probably just taking a heavy-duty nap somewhere, maybe in the back bedroom.
Or maybe he was dying in the back bedroom.
Come on man, don’t think like some paranoid mother. He’s probably just zonked out somewhere and he can’t hear you. After all, he’s…
Cameron froze in the living room doorway.
“Conan!”
He rushed towards the entertainment center. Conan was sprawled out beneath the TV, lying in a puddle of vomit. His eyes were rolled white and his breathing was very shallow.
“Conan! Oh no...”
His eyes filled with tears as he hoisted the dog into his arms and rushed towards the garage. He bundled Conan into the back seat of the car and he frantically started the engine.
“Come on, come on,” he breathed, tapping the steering wheel as he waited for the garage door to open. He reversed out of the garage with squealing tires, and Mindy’s head jerked up from a cluster of freshly planted tulips.
“Cameron?”
Cameron didn’t hear her as he raced down the street. He didn’t even remember to close the garage door.
****
Mindy was doing yoga in her spare bedroom/workout room when she heard a car drive up. She wiped a thin film of sweat from her forehead as she peered through the blinds and saw Cameron’s car pull into the driveway and stop. She saw him in the driver’s seat, a lost, vacant look in his eyes. She watched him sit there for almost three minutes, then he blinked rapidly and drove slowly into the garage. There was a faint hum as the garage door closed, then silence.
She stepped away from the window and stood on the yoga mat. Should she go over there and see if he was okay? Something was obviously going on with him, and it had looked like an emergency from the way he had peeled out of his driveway a few hours earlier.
As she turned to head to the bedroom to change her clothes, something stopped her.
What if something terrible has happened? She wasn’t exactly a close friend and she certainly wasn’t a relative. What if he thought she was being creepy? What would she say, anyway? “Hey Cameron, I watched you sitting in your driveway looking sad. You want to talk about it?”
Mindy huffed loudly, blowing a strand of blonde hair away from her eyes. Why was it so hard to be nice sometimes?
With slow, almost reluctant movements, she rolled up the yoga mat and left the room to go take a shower.
CHAPTER 7
The loud knocking rang in Cameron’s head like a fire alarm. He winced and grabbed his ears as the headache barreled through his brain.
“I’m coming, I’m coming…”
He stumbled out of bed, bumping into the nightstand and jostling the whiskey bottle that miraculously did not tip over. He staggered like a caveman, his hands hanging down below his knees. His foot knocked against an empty bottle of Bacardi, and he frowned with confusion.
What…?
Then he remembered.
His knees trembled and he rushed to the wastebasket and expelled everything in his stomach. He coughed and spat, trying to dislodge a trail of spittle.
The knocking continued.
Cameron wiped his eyes and forced himself to stand.
Damn this stupid world…
He yanked the front door open and squinted as the sunshine stabbed his eyes.
“Dude!” Chucky exclaimed, wrapping Cameron in a suffocating embrace. “I’m so sorry, man.”
Cameron gasped for air, and for a moment, he forgot about his blazing headache.
“How…how did you know?”
Chucky whipped out his phone. “Your tweet last night. Don’t you remember?”
Cameron peered closely at the single line of text.
RIP Conan. You wer the best dog in the hole world.
“You spelled ‘whole’ wrong,” Chucky said, “but you’re grieving so it’s fine.”
Cameron rubbed his eyes. “I…I don’t even remember writing that.”
“It looks like you were hitting it pretty hard last night,” Chucky observed as he wrinkled his nose.
Cameron nodded. “Listen, can we talk inside? I need some coffee and something greasy.”
Chucky’s face lit up. “Music to my ears.”
In the kitchen, after piling his plate high with bacon and scrambled eggs, he looked at Cameron with a stern face.
“So dude, tell me what happened.”
Cameron poked weakly at his own food, then gingerly nibbled on a slice of bacon.
“When I came home last night, he was just… He was lying on the floor in the living room, barely alive. I rushed him to the vet but he was gone in less than an hour.”
“What was it?” Chucky asked as he filled his mouth with egg.
“Old age, mostly. He lived two years longer than the average beagle, so I guess he was lucky. He also had some kind of heart disease called sub-aortic stenosis. It can be fatal but I never knew he had it. He wasn’t a purebred; I just got him from the pound.”
“How’d he get it?”
Cameron shrugged. “How do we get cancer or an aneurysm? It just happens. Nothing we can do.”
Chucky stared at him for several moments. “That’s kind of a bummer, man. I know you’re sad and all but you sound like some German philosopher or something.”
“Well it’s true, isn’t it? We’re here and then we’re not.”
“Come on man, don’t think like that. Conan was an awesome dog. You got him right after college, right? That’s a long time, man. I think something like that endures, even if it’s just as memories. It’s sad that he’s gone, but you got to think positive. Think about all the great times you had with him. Remember when you fed him those pot brownies?”
A small smile cracked Cameron’s stony expression. “No, you fed him those pot brownies after I told you not to bring them to the party. Dogs can’t eat chocolate anyway, you idiot.”
Chucky laughed so hard that scrambled eggs fell out of his mouth in like a yellow waterfall. “That was too funny, man, the way he was stumbling around the house. He wouldn’t stop humping that one girl’s foot, remember?”
Cameron had to chuckle. “Yeah. She was so pissed. I kind of liked her too but Conan ruined any chances of that.”
Chucky wiped his eyes. “Ah, too funny, man.”
“Yeah.”
Their laughter dissipated like an echo and they ate their food in silence. Cameron chewed his bacon thoughtfully, then tilted his head as if he was listening for something.
“Chucky.”
“Yeah?”
“I had an idea yesterday. I don’t know where it came from, but I can’t get it out of my head.”
“Uh-oh. I know how you get with new ideas. You’re like a leech, man. You latch on and you won’t let go. Maybe that’s why you’re such an awesome weapons designer.”
Cameron swallowed uncomfortably. “Yeah, uh, thanks. Anyway, I wanted to run it by you. It’s going to sound crazy, but I want to know what you think.”
Chucky set down his fork with a clatter. “Shoot.”
“I’m thinking about getting a tattoo on my face.”
He watched Chucky’s reaction closely. But there wasn’t any reaction. Chucky was as still as a stone. Even his eyes didn’t move or blink.
After several seconds, Cameron leaned a little closer.
“Chucky?”
Chucky’s face broke into a huge, toothy smile. “Dude! That would be incredible!”
