Shaded tattoo of a Cheshire Cat grin with green eyes on the side of a torso, just above the waistband of dark jeans.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cheshire Cat grin on the side of the waist

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A grinning Cheshire Cat face with a wide toothy smile and two green-yellow eyes sits on the side of the torso, above the waistband of dark jeans. The face is drawn with dark grey linework and soft grey shading, with the eyes as the only coloured elements. The composition is a close side view of the torso against a blue top and a pale background.

Ribs Cheshire cat Grin Cat Eye Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had got into the bunting again, so the flags sagged over the stalls like wet washing, and I was halfway through counting my last three umbrellas when the cat settled on the edge of my tarpaulin. It had no body to speak of, only a grin hanging in the drip, wide and crooked, with two eyes the colour of pond water under a lamp. "You're blocking the light," I said, because the man on the fish stall had taught me that line years ago and I'd never found a better one.

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It laughed, or the drip did. It asked what I'd sell for a wish that didn't need a face to hold it. I told it I sold clocks, a crate of brass mantel clocks from a house clearance in Oldham, all running four minutes slow, and that nobody bought time that wasn't theirs. The grin widened until I could count its teeth, small and white as piano keys. "Then sell me a Tuesday," it said. "Mine went missing near the fish stall."

I should have said no. Instead I handed it the cheapest clock, the one with the cracked dial, and it took the thing by its hands and turned the hands backwards, slowly, the way you'd turn a key. The market noise went thin. Stallholders kept shouting prices, but their mouths ran out of step with the sound, and the rain hung in the air above us like beads on a string.

When it finally faded, the grin stayed behind on the wet canvas, a stain of grey lines and gold that would not wipe away. Now every customer who stops at my stall smiles back at it first, and I have stopped selling the clocks. Mostly they ask me the time. I tell them it's always a quarter to something, and they never ask which.