Black and grey realistic tattoo of a beetle with spread wings on the inner forearm near the wrist.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Beetle tattoo on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a beetle with its wings partly open sits on the inner forearm of a person wearing a light blue shimmer top. The insect is drawn in detailed linework with soft grey shading on the shell and body, and its legs and antennae extend outward across the skin. The photograph is taken from a close angle, with the wrist and hand visible at the top right of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The beetle came to the fair in a matchbox that Ada's father had won from a tinker at Lowestoft, and by the time the caravans reached the downs it had outgrown the box and most of its manners. Nobody knew whose beetle it was. The showman said it was a lucky one and charged a penny to look at it through a glass jar. Children paid, and then their mothers, and by the second week the takings were better than the bearded lady's.

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On the last night before the fair moved on to the coast, the wind got into the big tent and lifted the canvas like a sail. Ada went out to the paddock to find the horses and found the beetle on the gatepost instead, its shell gone dull with dew, its wings half open as though it meant to argue. It lifted off before she could reach it. It went straight up over the wagons, past the lamp on the dodgem track, and down toward the sea-smelling dark where the road ran out.

She did not follow it, though her father said after that she should have. Instead she sat on the step of the lemonade stall and counted the lamps going out one by one until there were only two left, and then she went to bed with the jar still on the table, empty, its lid unscrewed. In the morning the showman swore the beetle had been worth more than the whole fair, and maybe it was. Ada only knew that the road to the coast was long, and that the gatepost was still warm when she touched it.

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From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.