Black and grey outline tattoo of the cartoon mermaid Ariel and her fish friend Flounder on a forearm, with light shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ariel and Flounder on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A line drawing of the animated mermaid Ariel reclines above the fish Flounder, who swims across the lower part of the limb. The work uses bold black outlines with soft grey shading on the fish and the mermaid's tail and hair. The design runs diagonally up the skin, filling most of the frame against a dark background.

Forearm Mermaid Fish Cartoon character

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Harbour Court had been broken since Easter, so Nan and I took the stairs up to the fourteenth floor with a goldfish in a freezer bag. Nan wouldn't let me carry it upright. 'Flounder hates being jostled,' she said, though the fish had been dead quiet since the corner shop and I suspected it was just sulking.

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Dad had won Flounder at the summer fair the year before he left, and he'd named it after the fish in the old video Nan kept taped over with Sunday football. Every Tuesday she put the film on and sang along to the bit where the girl with red hair sits on a rock and wants the whole world to be wet. I told her that was a daft thing to want. She said I'd understand when I was older, which is the sort of thing grown-ups say when they haven't got an answer.

The canal behind the retail park was brown and flat and smelled of diesel, nothing like the sea on the telly. Nan knelt on a folded carrier bag, her knees cracking like biscuits, and tipped the fish in. For a long second it just hung there, mouth working, as if it was waiting for someone to explain the rules. Then it turned and looked back up at us, and I swear it had the same face as the cartoon fish on the video, all big eyes and nerves.

'Go on, then,' Nan said, and she didn't sound sad, only tired in the good way. The fish flicked once and was gone under the bridge. We climbed back up all fourteen floors, and at the top Nan said she'd write to the council about the lift. She never did. But every Tuesday since, she's let me pick the film.