Fine line black tattoo of a cassette tape with loose tape looping below it, on the inner forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cassette tape on a forearm

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A small line tattoo of a cassette tape sits on the forearm, with its loose tape spilling down in looping curves beneath it. The linework is thin and single-weight, with no shading, and the design is rendered in black ink on pale skin. The tattoo is centred on the arm against a dark blue background and a light sleeve.

Fine line Forearm

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell,

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The tape came out of the deck on the Llanfor road, two miles below the top of the pass, and I have spent the whole evening trying to put it back. Your father's Walkman was never built for cold hands. The loops of brown ribbon went everywhere: over the gearstick, down into the footwell, and once, when I stopped to let a sheep cross, out through the open window and along the verge like a kite string with nothing on the end.

I wound it back by hand under the lamp in the refuge, using a biro as a spindle. It took until nearly midnight. The shepherd who keeps the hut, Iolo, came in with a flask of tea and watched without saying anything, then told me the last side he'd played on that deck was a choir from Bala, and that the tape had stretched somewhere in the middle so the tenors came out sounding like they were underwater. I said that was the bit I liked best.

Tomorrow I'll walk up to the cairn and try the tape again in the wind, because you were right, it sounds different up there, thinner and more honest. If it snaps for good, I'll keep the empty plastic shell in my coat pocket. It still has your handwriting on the label, the song titles smudged where your thumb went over them.

Love, Moll