Black and grey tattoo on a forearm of a suited figure with a birdcage for a head, holding a small bird, over a red-orange triangle and circle pattern.

Birdcage-headed man in a suit on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a standing figure in a tailcoat and waistcoat with a birdcage in place of its head, with a small bird perched on an outstretched hand. The figure is rendered in black and grey with fine stippled shading and detailed linework, while the background is a scattered pattern of red-orange triangles and circles. The photograph shows the design wrapping along the arm, with a second angle of the same tattoo visible at the right edge.

Forearm Birdcage Bird Man Suit Triangle Circle Pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The gentleman came up the lane on the feast of St Edmund, just as the bell for Sext was going, and I will admit I did not at first realise he had a head at all. The cage sat upon his shoulders like a lamp in a window, its brass gone green at the hinges, and inside it a single grey finch hopped from perch to perch as though it were paying rent. Brother Anselm took him for a travelling clockmaker. He wore a black tailcoat brushed to a shine and a white waistcoat buttoned to the throat, and he carried his gloves in one hand and a sealed letter in the other.

He asked for the abbot, and when Father Hilary came out in his slippers, the gentleman asked for nothing more than that the finch be let out to fly over the water meadows. "It has been counting the days," he said. He held out one bare hand, palm up, and the bird came down from the cage door and settled there as neatly as a coin. We all stood in the cloister and watched it go. Nobody spoke.

Here is the odd part, which you will not believe. Where his hand had rested on the flagstones, little red triangles and rings began to appear in the damp, as though pressed in by a stamp nobody had seen used. Brother Anselm swears they were there before the bird left. I have scrubbed those stones twice and they keep coming back.

I am sending this with the carter. The gentleman left no direction except the word Hollin, written on the inside of a glove. If you know where that is, write and tell me. I have kept the grey feather he dropped on the step, and I will tell you the rest when we meet at Michaelmas.