Black and grey traditional style tattoo of a big-eyed alien holding a knife, with a small flower, leaves and lettering, on a lower leg.

Alien with knife on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A large-eyed alien head with solid black eye sockets holds a knife, drawn in bold black outlines with simple black fill. Above it are a small flower, sprigs of leaves and lettering, including the words good bye, with part of another phrase visible. The tattoo sits on the calf, with more dark ornamental tattoos higher up the leg and black canvas trainers at the bottom of the frame.

Traditional Calf Alien Knife Flower Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The council pulled the field permit on Tuesday, so it falls to you to tell Mr Oddie the knife act is finished. He sits on an upturned crate beside the generator, rubbing oil into a blade he has thrown for thirty-one years, and he doesn't look up. 'Tell them the alien goes last,' he says. 'The alien always goes last.'

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The alien is painted down the side of the caravan, big black eyes and a grin like a cat that has been at the cream, clutching a dagger as if it were a lollipop. Children used to queue for that picture alone. Now the queue is three pensioners and a lurcher. You empty the cash tin on the step: eleven pounds forty, a bent sixpence, and a note folded small in biro. Good bye, it says, and then a word scribbled out, the way a child writes when someone has taken her pen.

Oddie is quiet until the lamps start buzzing. Then he holds out the knife, handle first, the way he has offered it to every assistant who ever stood against the board. 'The trick was never the throwing,' he says. 'It was the stillness. You stand there and let them believe you might not move.' He takes the caravan keys from his pocket and sets them on the crate, and you understand he has already sold the van to a man from Kent.

When the tent is folded and the crowd has gone home, you stand alone in the sawdust and lift the knife to the work light. The alien grins back from the caravan door, eyes dark as spilt ink, not one of them missing the mark. You raise your hand, hold it very still, and say goodbye to the empty ring, the only audience left.