Black and teal cicada tattoo with outlined wings, centred on the upper chest.

Cicada tattoo on the chest

Chest · Mixed · Photo

A cicada with spread wings is tattooed centrally on pale skin. The bold black linework outlines the wings, veins, segmented abdomen and legs, with teal wash in the wing panes and on the thorax. The insect fills most of the frame and sits centred on a plain background.

Chest Insect Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cicadas were still going at half past four, a sound like a fan belt wearing through, and Dee swore it was the only thing in Nevada that never gave up. We had been on the spur road since Tonopah with the windows down and the radio dead, arguing about whether the dry lake ahead was water or only sky standing on its head.

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The bug hit the windscreen just past the cattle grid, a thump like a dropped glove. It stayed there, wings spread flat and faintly wet-looking, the veins drawn so sharp you could have read them. Where the light caught the panes they went the green of a swimming pool at dusk. "It's yours," Dee said. "It's come to collect the lake." I told her cicadas don't collect anything. They sing themselves hoarse and die in a fortnight. She said that was exactly what a man who had never been thirsty would say.

I switched the engine off to shut her up, and the song stopped all at once, every mesquite and telegraph wire in the valley going quiet together. The heat came in through the glass. Then the cicada lifted off the bonnet, unhurried, and drifted out over the flat where the water was supposed to be. For a moment the air above the salt shimmered blue-green, the exact colour of its wings.

When I got out to look, the bonnet held only a shell, split down the back and hollow as a glove, still gripping the paint. Dee picked it up and held it to the light. "Well," she said, "it left us the lake."