Black panther tattoo on the upper arm, with blue glowing outlines visible under ultraviolet light.

Black panther tattoo on upper arm under UV light

Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A prowling black panther with an arched back, raised head and open mouth runs down the upper arm, with its long curled tail reaching towards the elbow. The figure is solid black with fine blue outlines and interior lines that glow under ultraviolet light, and the photograph is taken against a purple-lit background. The panther fills most of the frame, with the arm cropped so that no face is visible.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The Lyceum people have finally sent the panther back from the cleaners, and I've spent all morning on my knees in the wings with a tin of phosphor paint and a size-zero brush. You'll laugh, but I nearly cried when I saw the tail. Some clot with a mop had folded it under a crate for a month, and the fine blue lines had cracked like old glaze.

Mr Averill still insists the act was his idea, the black velvet man who vanished under the blacklights, but it was me who worked out that you can't see a black cat on a black stage. So you paint only the edges that catch the light and let the rest go. Every outline is a little ridge of paint I built up by hand, one stroke at a time, while the dance band played Gershwin through the floorboards.

On Thursday the lamps went down and the panther came up over the lip of the stage, arched and snarling, and the whole house drew one breath together. The tail was what they loved. It swept the boards like a question mark. A boy in the front row shouted at it, and I swear the thing looked back at him.

I've kept a smear of the paint on my thumb. Under the lamp in the dressing room it still glows, a thin line along the knuckle, as if I've been handling something that was never quite mine to hold.

Love, Dolly

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