Solid black bat symbol tattoo shown in two photographs, one close up on the skin and one small tattoo on the lower abdomen above black jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bat symbol tattoo on skin

Blackwork · Other · Black and grey · Photo

The top photograph shows a large solid black bat symbol filling most of the frame on skin with a reddish tone. The lower photograph shows a much smaller bat symbol on a person's lower abdomen, above the waistband of black jeans, with the navel visible. Both tattoos are flat black fills with crisp edges and no visible shading or colour.

Blackwork Other Bat Silhouette Logo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ghost train had been losing its paint since Margate, so by the time the fair reached the car park behind the Co-op in Dunmow, you had a tin of black gloss, a number four brush and a bat to put back on the sign above the tunnel. Nobody in the crew agreed on which bat it should be. Kessock wanted the one from the old posters, all hooked wings and a nose like a pointed thumb. Ray, who ran the train, wanted something he could see from the Ferris wheel. You settled it by working from the stencil you had cut in 1987 from a cereal packet, because it was the only one that fitted your hand.

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You painted after the last queue had gone home, under a single bulb that drew moths the size of coins. The trick, Ray told you, was to load the brush and then leave it alone. Black gloss dries grey where it has been fussed, and a grey bat looks like a bat that has been left out in the rain. The wings had to be crisp at the scallops, so you rested your little finger on the board and pulled each edge in one stroke. A boy in a pyjama top sat on the caravan step and watched you do the ears. He asked why bats were black. You said because they only come out when the lights are off, and he nodded as if that settled a long argument with his father.

By dawn the sign looked like a hole cut neatly out of the sky. The boy was up on the steps before the generator had warmed, asking if he could ride it first. Ray said yes, but only if he kept his hands inside the car. Later, packing the tins into the van, you found a black fleck on the back of your own wrist, round and perfect, where the brush had flicked as you turned to speak to him. You did not wipe it off. It was still there in the Tuesday rain at the next town, dry and glossy, a small bat of your own that nobody else would ever see.