Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Axe tattoo on the back of a hand

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is shown against a black background, with a shaded axe tattoo across the back of the hand, its handle running diagonally towards the thumb side. The axe is rendered in black and grey with solid outlines and soft tonal shading on the blade and haft. Further dark tattoo work covers the wrist and back of the hand, and a few thin marks sit on the fingers.

Hand Axe Hand Finger

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flour sacks were still stacked by the back door when you went out to split kindling, the yard grey with frost and the sky over the chimney stacks no lighter than ink. The oven had gone cold twice that week, and Joan, who owned the place, said the loaves were coming out tasting of damp wood. So you took the hatchet down from its nail, set a split round of birch on the block and listened to the street wake up one van at a time.

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Behind you the proving room hummed. Ruth had the first tins out already, and the smell of sour starter drifted through the kitchen window in long warm breaths. You kept at it. Each swing had to be square, because a glancing blow sent the wedge skittering across the frost, and you had learned that lesson on your shin the winter before. The kindling fell in neat pale heaps, and you stacked it the way your father had taught you, crosswise so the air could get at it.

At half four the first lorry idled at the kerb and Joan came out in her coat over her pyjamas, a flask in each hand. She looked at the woodpile, then at you, and said nothing about the damp. She poured you tea without asking how long you had been out there.

When the oven door finally swung open with its roar of heat, you were already wiping the blade on a rag and hanging the hatchet back on its nail. The bread came out dark and blistered, sharp at the crust. Joan tapped the base of a loaf, listened to the hollow sound it made, and nodded at the woodpile through the window. That'll do, she said, and went back in to the racks.