Ink flash sheet with two arm wrestling figures, an anvil, a sketch of question marks and the words Forgot to be human, with splatter marks across the paper.

Arm wrestling figures and anvil flash sheet

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing on paper showing two silhouetted figures locked in an arm wrestle above a central sketch of an arrow-like symbol. Above them are an anvil, a cluster of question marks and Japanese kanji alongside Cyrillic and Latin lettering, including the words Forgot to be human along the bottom. The linework is bold and graphic, with dark splatter marks scattered across the white background.

Kanji Lettering Figure Splatter Symbol

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Rain came sideways under the iron roof of Castle Street market, and by eleven the tarpaulins sagged like wet bellies. Nobody was buying. I was minding my uncle's stall of second-hand anvils and rusted vices, and the only trade was two lads at the bottom of the arcade, a beer crate between them for a table, locked hand to hand.

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Tomasz had come over from the Gdansk yards with forearms like mooring rope. The other was Reece Carrick, who sold phone cases from a van and had a theory about everything. They'd been at it since the bells of St Mary's. Each time one bent the other back, a knot of soggy shoppers cheered, then forgot why. Someone scrawled a question on the back of a receipt, who gets tired first, and pinned it to the post. By dusk there were a dozen more, flapping like gulls on a string.

Near closing, Reece's knuckles went white and he was losing. He looked up at me, not at Tomasz, and said, "Your uncle ever tell you what the smith said about anvils?" I shook my head. "Doesn't care who's right," Reece panted. "Only who keeps hammering." Then he laughed, roared, and drove his hand down. Tomasz's wrist hit the crate with a sound like a dropped tray. Neither of them spoke for a while after that.

We packed up in the rain. The receipts had gone to pulp on the post, all but one, a question in smudged marker that nobody had bothered to answer. I wrapped the anvil in a feed sack and wheeled it home, water running off its horn, and the last thing I noticed was Tomasz, still sitting on the crate, rubbing his wrist and staring at nothing.