Black and grey tattoo of a dismembered humanoid figure with drips of ink, running across the ribs of a bare torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dismembered figure on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A humanoid figure reaches out with one arm, with its other arm, one hand and a lower leg shown separated from the body. The figure is rendered in loose black ink with soft grey shading, uneven edges and dripping marks that suggest wet ink. The tattoo covers the side of the torso, and the photograph is taken close up against plain skin with no colour.

Ribs Hand Ink drip Ink splatter Torso

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down by the range, Dilys, and mind the kettle. You'll not hear this one in chapel, so keep your voice low. My grandfather knew the man who drew the figure on the lamp room wall at the Cwm Pit. Ivor Pryce, they called him, because he could turn lamp smoke into ink better than any clerk could turn it into sums.

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Ivor worked with a goose quill and a jar of soot he mixed himself, and what he drew on that whitewash was a man dancing. Not a pretty dance. The man kept one arm out, pointing up the shaft to where the daylight was, and the other arm had already gone, flung off into the dark like a dropped glove. A leg went too. The men laughed at it at first. Then Huw Morgan's brother lost two fingers at the face, and nobody laughed after that. Ivor swore the ink was still wet when he stepped back, and it ran down the plaster in long threads, like rain coming off a roof after a storm.

The owners wanted it limed over. Ivor went down the next morning with a bucket and a brush, and the story goes he stood under that pointing hand a long while, then set the bucket down and walked to the cage without a word. He was the last man on it that day, and he stood aside to let the others go first. The roof came in on the lower level before the next shift. They brought up eleven, and Ivor was not among them.

They never did finish the lime. It's still there, grey and thin, but in wet weather the ink comes through it. If you stand where the hand points, you'll feel cold air rising from below, steady as breath, and when you touch the wall it's wet to the fingers.