Colour tattoo of a butterfly whose wings are red and black chequered racing flags, with a bowtie emblem and fleur-de-lis, on an upper arm in a bold, flat style.

Butterfly with chequered flag wings on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a butterfly with two wings, each made from a crossed chequered racing flag in black and white. The red panels of the flags carry a bowtie emblem on one side and a fleur-de-lis on the other. Bold black outlines and flat red and black fills are used, and the design sits centrally on a pale arm against a dark background.

Upper arm Butterfly Fleur-de-lis Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The flag is still damp with the morning dew you didn't expect out here, and you shake it out on the shoulder of Ridgeback Road before the first car grinds up from the valley. Your cousin Ruth said the timing shack has been empty since the mine closed, but the padlock gave way to one tug. Inside there is a tin of chalk, a radio with no batteries, and a moth-eaten flag folded into a triangle, as if someone meant to come back for it.

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You wave the flag for the first driver, a rusted pickup with a fuel can roped to its tailgate, and it rattles past without slowing. The second is a low grey coupe whose driver lifts two fingers from the wheel. By noon you have counted eleven cars and one tortoise, and the heat has made the tarmac breathe. A butterfly the colour of a brake light lands on the flagpole, opens and closes its wings twice, then sets off across the road toward the mesa as if it has a race of its own to finish.

You follow it, which is how you end up at the wrecked barn by the wash, where a row of old bowtie badges hangs from a nail in the rafters, catching the sun. Someone has painted a fleur-de-lis on the door in fading blue. Under the flag inside, you find a notebook with a list of names and times, the last line written in a hand you almost recognise.

You fold the chequered wings the way the moth did, tuck the notebook under your arm, and walk back toward the road. Somewhere behind you an engine turns over, then another, and the flag snaps once in the wind, as if the race has been waiting for the one person who was meant to start it.