Brand Xed

"He got mad at his girlfriend, so he and his buddies said, 'We'll fix her.' " he says. "That was like 10 years ago and he's married now and he had this ridiculous thing on his foot."

He flips to another male ankle, this one with a bright red heart inscribed with the names Amy, Brittany and Emily.

"Those are his daughters," Green says. "He goes to Myrtle Beach for a golf weekend with his buddies and he comes back and he tells his wife, 'Honey, look, I got the girls' names on -- ' And his wife says, 'You idiot! That's coming off! Get that off and then you can come back in the bedroom!' So when he came in here, it was barely dry."

An Endless Cycle

Bzzzzzt!

The laser beam crawls across Melissa Morrissette's ankh tattoo, making that sizzling noise. Then it stops.

"Okay, now we're going to go after the red," says Jessie Mallalieu, a physician's assistant. She pushes a button that changes the color of the laser beam from a white light, which removes black ink, to a green light, which removes red ink.

Bzzzzzt!

In less than 10 minutes, Mallalieu is done.

"I'm glad it's over," Morrissette says. "It kind of feels like you're on fire."

Mallalieu swabs the raw, reddened tattoo with a numbing cream, then wraps it in gauze.

"At work," Morrissette says, "I'm telling everybody, 'Please don't get yourself tattooed any place visible because you're gonna hate 'em and it hurts when you get 'em removed.' "

After Morrissette leaves, Mallalieu tidies up, preparing for the next patient. At 25, she has been removing tattoos for only a year, but she already has stories to tell.

"I had a man come in and say, 'I woke up with this tattoo. I went to a party and ended up with a tattoo, and I had no idea till I woke up the next morning.' "

What kind of tattoo was it?

She laughs. "It was a Playboy bunny."