Fine line tattoo of a cartoon figure in a striped top sitting on a box and holding a red balloon, on the forearm.

Figure on a box with red balloon

Fine line · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A cartoon figure with a large head and wide eyes sits on the edge of an open-sided box and holds the string of a red balloon that floats above. The linework is thin and black, with the figure's hair and striped top shaded in grey and red. The design sits centrally on pale skin with the box as its base and the balloon rising toward the top of the frame.

Fine line Forearm Balloon Cartoon character String

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ivo had been perched on the apple crate since the matinee, the balloon string looped twice round his fingers, because Mr Sallow had said it was the last thing in the wagons that still sold. The big top had lost its centre pole in March. Patches of grey sky showed through the canvas like missing teeth. The clowns had gone to the arcades on the coast, the lion had been sold to a farm near Thirsk, and the trapeze wires hung slack above a ring nobody swept anymore.

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Nell came across the wet grass with a paper cone of chips and sat down on the next crate, her coat pulled over her knees. She counted the takings into a biscuit tin every night, and every night the tin got lighter. "Sallow wants it sold tonight," she said, nodding at the balloon. "Says a child in Ipswich will pay two shillings for something that won't last the week."

Ivo looked up at the red bulb of rubber straining against the rigging. He thought about how crowds always clapped loudest for the things that were about to fall. He thought about the tin, and the coast, and the lion who would never see Yorkshire again. Then he untied the string from his wrist.

He didn't sell it. He walked it out past the empty stands, through the flap and into the field, where the village lights were coming on beyond the hedge. Nell watched him go, chips forgotten in her lap. When Sallow came out with his lantern, the crate stood alone in the rain, its open side facing the sky, and somewhere above the hedge a small red spot was climbing towards the morning, trailing one long thin line behind it.