Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a spotted beetle with red crystal growths on its back, set over a teal and coral circle with a black record and dotted lines, on a forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Crystal beetle over a sun disc on a forearm

Neo-trad · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A spotted beetle with red and pink crystal formations growing from its back sits over a teal and coral circle. Below it, a black disc resembling a record is joined to small dots and thin connecting lines, with orange and red accents. The shading is smooth and the linework is bold on the beetle and fine on the dotted elements, with the design centred on the forearm against a blurred street background.

Neo-trad Forearm Beetle Crystal Circle Dot Line

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The beetle came up out of the gramophone on the third night of the gale, and Mrs Hollis, who had forbidden the parlour piano to be opened since her husband's funeral, said only, 'Well, don't let it near the tablecloth.'

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It was no ordinary beetle. Its back grew crystals the pink of boiled sweets and the red of a lighthouse lens, and they threw so much light across the wallpaper that we could read the tide tables without the lamp. Mr Okonedo, the retired pilot in the room above mine, swore it was Ambrose's doing. Ambrose had kept a black ledger of every boat that never came back to Saltcombe, and he had pressed the names into old shellac so they could be played on Sundays. The record in the cupboard had a hairline crack across its label, and the beetle walked straight out of the crack.

We followed it up the stairs and across the hall, where Ambrose had pinned red dots to the ceiling and joined them with black thread, a map of the sky he insisted was truer than the almanac. The beetle clambered from dot to dot, its crystals chiming faintly against the wire, until it reached the last pin above the front door and stopped as if it had been sent with a message.

Mrs Hollis unbolted the door. Outside, the sea had gone flat and coral, and every name on the ledger was suddenly legible on the water. The beetle shook loose one crystal, which rolled to my feet, still warm. She wrapped it in her apron, set it in the teapot and said, 'For the next gale,' before going to look for the matches.