Black linework tattoo on a forearm showing a city skyline, a dog and a figure bending down, with stippled dotwork shading at the lower left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

City skyline and dog on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A line drawing of a city skyline runs along the forearm, with a cartoon-style dog and a figure bending towards the ground below a small roadside sign. The ink is solid black linework with stippled dotwork shading in the lower left, and there is no colour. The forearm fills most of the frame, with the lower body and a grey knit garment visible at the edges.

Dotwork Forearm City Skyline Building Dog Figure Sign

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Abernathy's terrier had never once looked down, which was why Tomasz trusted him. The street they walked ran along the top of the ridge, a thin tarmac lip with the whole of Wren Hollow spread out on one side, roofs stacked like crumbs, and on the other side nothing but the stippled grey dark where the ground gave up. The sign at the bend said EDGE in letters somebody had painted over twice, and the council had long since stopped arguing about it.

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Every Thursday Tomasz brought the dog down past the tower blocks, past the chip shop with its shutters half up, and every Thursday the dog stopped at the same lamp post, which was exactly where the lip was narrowest. Tomasz had worked out that if he bent low enough, one hand on the lead and the other flat on the cold tarmac, he could see straight down into the dotted dark and count what had fallen off: a bicycle bell, a wedding ring on a string, three pigeons that had never quite landed.

Last week the dog did not stop. He trotted to the very edge, glanced back over his shoulder at the skyline as if to check it was still there, and then hopped onto something nobody had seen before, a thin black ledge of road running out over the drop. Tomasz followed, one knee on the tarmac, and found it held. Below, the dark was not empty. It was full of lanes and rooftops and lit windows, and a tram hummed past underneath like a thought he had almost had.

He stood up slowly. Behind him the city looked smaller than it ever had, and the dog wagged at the sign as if it had finally said something worth reading.