Black abstract tattoo of solid and outlined circles, dots and thin lines running down the middle of a person's lower back, in a fine line and blackwork style.

Abstract circles and lines down the spine

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a back with a vertical abstract tattoo running along the spine. It combines solid black circles that shrink towards the top, outlined circles, dots, thin single lines and soft ink splatter around the lower section. The work is in black ink only, with fine linework contrasting against the larger filled shapes, and the design is centred on the back.

Blackwork Fine line Dotwork Back Circle Line Dot Abstract Spine Ink splash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Harrow had been dead a fortnight when the orrery came down from the loft above the chapel, and Mrs Pask insisted it be finished before the auction men arrived. Nobody else in Coldharbour Lane could read the drawings. Ada had learned the notation from the old man over three winters, perched on an upturned crate while he muttered about pitch circles and the sin of rounding off a fraction.

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The spine of it was a brass rod, and on the rod the planets were strung like beads: the big discs at the bottom, the smaller ones climbing toward the ceiling, each one blacked with pitch so the lamplight would not catch. Ada cleaned the grime from the sun first, then the moon, then the little dots that marked comets nobody had seen in a century. The outlined rings were the tracks the planets were meant to keep. Only one of them was true. Harrow had left a note tucked under the base: "Every ring but the third is a lie I told to be kind."

She set the drive train by lamplight, turning the crank until the thin wires shivered and the ink-splashed stain beneath the Earth, where his hand had once shaken and dropped a bead of ink, began to move. The mechanism ticked for the first time in forty years. Mrs Pask came up the stairs with a cup of tea and stood very still in the doorway.

"Well," she said. "Which one is he, then?"

Ada did not answer. She nudged the smallest dot at the top until it lined up with the third ring, and let the whole thing run.