Three forearms against a black background, each with two solid black bands tattooed around the forearm in a blackwork style with brushed, uneven edges.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Double black bands on three forearms

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Three side-by-side photographs show the same pair of solid black bands tattooed around the inner forearm of different arms, with hands relaxed below. The bands have ragged, brushed edges and a flat, opaque black fill, with no shading or fine detail. The plain black background keeps the focus on the skin and the ink.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hall smelled of the same floor polish, and someone had stacked the chairs against the radiators the way Mr Ackroyd used to. I found the name badges in a biscuit tin. Mine said Lou in capitals, and under it someone had written Ex-Prefect in biro, which was a lie, because I was never made one.

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Dev Mistry's badge was still in the tin, unclaimed. His mum had asked me to come and said she wanted someone from the old year to sit with her. In Year Eleven he painted two black bands around his forearm every morning before registration, using a cheap sable brush and poster paint from the art block. His brother had gone into the canal at Stanley Bridge that summer, and nobody had told Dev it was all right to stop. The bands never came out straight. He said the edges had to look dragged, because that was how it felt.

Mrs Mistry pressed a jam jar into my hands. Two brushes stood in it, dry now and stiff with old paint. "He'd want you to have the fat one," she said. I told her I couldn't paint. She said nobody could, and that was the point.

In the toilets by the gym I rolled my sleeve up past the elbow and leaned over the sink. I loaded the brush with the tin of black I'd bought from the art block shop on the way over, and I dragged it round once, then again, the second line coming out too close and too thick. I left it to dry, pulled my sleeve down, and went back into the hall to sit beside her. Nobody asked, and the chairs stayed where they were.

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