Traditional style tattoo of a dagger wrapped in a banner reading IT HURTS UNTIL IT DOESN'T, with orange flowers and black leaves, on a forearm.

Dagger and banner on a forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A colour traditional tattoo shows a dagger with a striped handle wrapped by a pink banner that reads IT HURTS UNTIL IT DOESN'T, surrounded by orange flowers, black leaves and red drops. The bold black outlines are filled with solid pink, red, orange and teal, with simple flat shading. The design runs vertically along the inner forearm against a plain white background.

Traditional Forearm Dagger Banner Lettering Flower Leaves Blood drop Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Gary Pask is already at the bar when you walk in, a pint in each hand as if the years have made him generous, and he says your name like it still costs him something. The Royal Oak function room smells of fryer oil and Lynx. Someone has pinned a paper banner over the stage, the old school colours faded to the shade of weak squash, and the only thing anyone wants to talk about is the Year Nine trip to Llandudno.

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You remember it differently. You remember the coach breaking down on the A55, Mrs Lowther's tartan flask, and Gary swearing he could arm wrestle the whole sixth form. You remember the dagger he scratched into the back of the bus seat with a compass point, and that you were the one who got the detention for it, because you were the one who laughed.

"You never paid me back," he says, sliding a pint across. "Four quid for the fags. Remember?" He grins, and for a second you are eleven again, waiting by the bike sheds for someone to say the thing that makes it real.

The DJ plays a song you both used to dance to badly. Gary holds out his hand. You dig in your purse, find a crumpled fiver and press it into his palm, and he laughs so hard he has to put his pint down. He taps the bar twice, the way he used to tap a desk for luck, and you realise the rest of the night is going to hurt a lot less than the last twenty years did.