Black and grey photo of a caped, cowled hero tattoo across the left side ribs, with a city skyline above the figure.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Caped hero figure on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo covers the side of the ribs, showing a caped, cowled hero figure with a dark mask and pointed ears, arms spread wide. A city skyline sits above the figure, and a skull-like shape with swirling lines appears near the lower part of the design. The shading is smooth with strong dark areas in the cape and mask, and the composition wraps around the curve of the torso.

Ribs Superhero Batman Cape City skyline Skull Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Dad said the cape came from the Co-op's rag bin, two yards of black gabardine that had once been somebody's funeral coat. Mam cut it down for me the winter the Ashgrove seam flooded and the men were kept under for three days with no word. I was nine. I wore it up the back lane with a tea towel knotted over my nose, and the lads from Row Four called me the Night Shift, which I took as a compliment.

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I had a picture in my head of a city past the pit wheel, all towers stacked like coal on a tipper, because Mr Pell had drawn one on the chapel blackboard and told us it was Manchester and that nobody there had ever seen a pick. Old Tom, the skull that came up in the spoil, sat on our windowsill beside the clock. Dad said he had been a deputy once, and I believed him, because nobody gets a skull like that by being idle.

On the night the fan stopped, I took the cape and ran for the pit gates with my arms out wide, the way the picture showed. The wind caught the gabardine and lifted it like wings. Mam was shouting from the step. I climbed the spoil heap in the rain and told the shaft I could see them, which was a lie, though I wanted it to be true so badly that I kept shouting until my voice cracked.

They came up at dawn, grey as ash, every one of them. Dad found me asleep on the heap with the cape over my knees like a blanket, and he didn't take it off me. He said the men had seen a shape up top and walked towards it, and that was better than any city. I hung the cape on the nail behind the door that morning, and it is still there.