A realistic tattoo of a coilover shock absorber wrapped in smoke and red flames, on the calf of a leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Coilover shock and smoke on a calf

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a metal coilover shock absorber with a silver spring and grey cylinder, set against swirling grey smoke and red flame shapes. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong highlights on the metal and soft grey wisps framing the body. The photograph is taken from the side, with the calf filling most of the frame and a sticker-covered wall and tiled floor behind.

Realism Forearm Smoke Flame Metal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The spring had gone soft on the Vauxhall again, and Ray Pollard swore at it the way other men swore at the football. He had the car up on axle stands in the back of Ellery's yard in Dudley, the radio on low, a cup of tea going cold on the bonnet. Every time he pressed down on the wing the back end sank like a tired horse. Ellery's boy had brought the old coilover over from a scrapped Escort, and Ray meant to fit it before the rain came in off the hills.

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The cylinder was heavier than he expected, grey and cold, and the spring was wound tight as a bedspring, pink-streaked where the paint had worn thin in the sun. He worked the nut down with a rattle gun while the sparks from the grinder next door drifted over the wall like fireflies. Ellery came out wiping his hands and said the thing was older than both of them, that it had come from a rally car that had burned out on the Clee Hills in 1979 and somebody had pulled it from the ash and sold it for a fiver.

Ray didn't believe in ghosts, but he believed in a good story when it came with a spare part. He tightened the last bolt, lowered the car, and bounced the wing. It held. The shock settled with a dry, satisfied sigh, and somewhere in the smoke of the yard, a red tin of paint Ellery had left open flickered in the afternoon light like a small fire that had decided to stay put.