Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a brain, an eye and an anatomical heart stacked down the inside of a forearm.

Brain, eye and heart on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three anatomical motifs are stacked vertically along the inner forearm: a brain at the top, an eye in the middle and a heart below. The brain and heart are rendered with stippled dotwork shading and clean outlines, while the eye uses fine hatching and dotted shadow along the lid. The tattoo is shown in black and grey ink against plain pale skin, with a grey fabric sleeve at the left edge of the frame.

Dotwork Forearm Brain Eye Heart Anatomy Anatomical heart

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been falling on the market at Stennick since the morning bells, and the old woman at the end stall had sold nothing but a single brass button all day. She sat under her oilcloth with three things laid out on a square of sacking: a grey walnut-shaped bundle, a glass eye no bigger than a plum stone, and a heart the colour of cold liver, wrapped in muslin. Customers passed and did not stop.

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A boy came by with a wet cap and a debt his mother had sent him to pay. He asked what she wanted for them. She said the brain would make him clever, the eye would make him see what was owed him, and the heart would make him kind. He laughed and asked which was the dearest. She said they were all the same price, which was everything you had that nobody else was using yet.

He bought the eye, because it was smallest and he could hide it. It was only later, counting coins in the dry back room of the tavern, that he noticed the eye was looking at him, steady and grey, and that it did not blink when he did. He went back to the stall in the rain the next morning to ask for the other two. The sacking was bare. The woman was gone. Only the brass button sat in a puddle, catching the light.