Blue ink tattoo of a stylised beetle-like creature made from hexagons and swirling lines, on the torso of a person with smooth skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Blue hexagon and swirl creature tattoo

Geometric · Other · Colour · Photo

A single blue tattoo shows a stylised insect or creature with a central hexagon, two hexagons at the sides and four or more curling, tendril-like limbs. The linework is bold and uniform, with the blue fill appearing solid rather than shaded. The design sits centrally in the frame on a close-up of skin, with the edges of the body softly out of focus.

Geometric Other Creature Beetle Hexagon Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody had oiled the beetle since the Easter fair, so when I wound its key it gave a shriek like a gate, and the six hexagon lenses in its back flickered blue, then dimmed to the colour of skimmed milk. Father would have sworn at it. I only sat on the upturned crate and listened to the rain drumming on the big top, which had more holes in it than canvas now.

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The beetle had been Grandfather's idea, a tinker's joke that became an act. Its body was a ring of brass hexagons, and from it curled twelve tendrils he'd cut from copper piping, each ending in a little hook that caught the light. For thirty years it had walked the sawdust ring on its own, and children screamed with delight when it turned its head to look at them. Now the children were in the front row of the cinema in Ashby, and the beetle sat in a crate with a bent leg.

On the last night, Mr Pell came in with his coat dripping and said the council wanted the field by Monday. I asked him whether the beetle could be sold. He laughed, then stopped, because he looked at it properly for the first time in years and saw it was still beautiful, all that blue, the swirls like handwriting nobody could read anymore.

I didn't sell it. I carried it out past the wagons at midnight, wound it one last time and set it walking towards the hedge. It picked its way through the wet grass, tendrils lifting and settling, until the lenses were a smudge, then a glint, then nothing. Mr Pell says it's still in a hedge somewhere outside Market Harborough, waiting for someone to come along and look at it properly.