Split photo showing a black and grey panther tattoo on the side of the ribs on the left, and the same skin area faded after removal on the right.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black panther tattoo on ribs, before and after removal

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The left panel shows a black and grey panther climbing down the side of the torso, with its head turned and a long curled tail. The right panel shows the same area of skin after treatment, with only faint marks left where the ink was. The composition is a side-by-side pair with plain skin and a dark garment at the edges.

Ribs Panther Big cat Before and after

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Snow has shut the Hollin road since Tuesday, and Mr Teague is still in the back parlour with my husband's brandy, telling anyone who will listen that the panther on our east wall is the finest thing in the valley. I did not answer him. I know what the wall looks like this morning, because I have been up since four with a bucket of lye and a stiff brush, scrubbing lamp-black from the stones.

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Thomas painted it the summer before we were wed, a sprawl of a beast coming down from the eaves with its head turned back over one shoulder and its tail curled at the bottom like a question mark. Folk came from Keld to see it. The coachmen called it Mrs Hardcastle, after me, which I have never forgiven. It was the only thing in the house that seemed to move when the lamps guttered.

The inspector from the county comes on the first thaw, and he has written to say he will not licence a house with a painted beast on its façade that frightens the horses. So I scrub. The black comes away in grey smears, then in a ghost outline, paw by paw, until by dusk there is only a pale stain where the tail was and a blur like breath on glass.

Mr Teague watched me from the doorway with his cup held against his chest. 'You've made it climb back up into the snow,' he said, and I told him to fetch more coal. The panther is gone. The wall is only a wall now, and the cold comes through it just the same.