Man in a white shirt with crossed arms, both arms covered in small colourful illustrated tattoos of a camera, watch, rabbit and crown on the forearms and upper arms.

Colourful illustrated sleeve on crossed arms

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A man in a white shirt crosses his arms, and both forearms and upper arms are covered with many small illustrated tattoos. The motifs include a camera, a wristwatch, a rabbit, a crown, a diamond, a butterfly, a dog and a rainbow of stacked cubes, with the word smitten in script. The flat, bold colour is spread across the whole composition, with thin outlines and simple shading.

Forearm Upper arm Camera Watch Rabbit Crown Diamond Butterfly Dog Rainbow Cube Hand Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth Pim wrote every ticket in pencil, because ink made people think they were being robbed. The camera came in first on a wet Tuesday, a Kodak with its strap gone soft as bread. Then a green digital watch, its alarm still set for an hour nobody had ever explained. Then a stuffed rabbit with one ear re-stitched in red thread, which she priced at a pound, since nobody who loved a rabbit that badly should pay more.

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The man who brought the rest carried a shoebox under one arm like a loaf. Out came a paste diamond the size of a sugar cube, a crown cut from tinfoil, a butterfly pinned to card, and a rainbow of wooden cubes that clacked when he tipped them onto the counter. 'Valuation on the lot,' he said. Ruth wrote a figure she had no intention of charging, then drew a small tin dog in the margin of the ledger, because the box had one too, with a wheel for a foot.

He came back every Friday for six weeks, taking one thing home and leaving another. Ruth kept the tickets in a drawer marked UNCLAIMED, though nothing in it was unclaimed exactly. Before each object left, she drew it in the margin in pencil, so the book became a record of things passing through her hands on their way back to people who wanted them.

On the last Friday he asked for the ticket for the watch. She found it, read her own handwriting, and crossed out the price. In the box marked description she wrote one word she had never written on a ticket before: smitten. He read it upside down across the counter and laughed, and the watch, handed back over the glass, chose that moment to sound its alarm, as if it had only been waiting to be asked.