Close-up of a small black fine line tattoo of a mountain range on the side of a torso, above the hip, with flowers and an embroidered skirt in the background.

Fine line mountain range on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single black outline of a jagged mountain range with a sharp central peak and a lower ridge extending to the left and right. The linework is thin and even, with no shading, and the ink is a dark grey-black against light skin. The tattoo sits on the side of the ribcage, framed by a white crop top, an embroidered skirt and a backdrop of red flowers.

Fine line Ribs Mountain Mountain range Peak Landscape Outline

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Calder House had been dead since March, so every evening I took the stairs with a carrier bag of my dad's prescriptions and counted the landings under my breath. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. By the seventeenth my knees had opinions. Dad was in the flat at the top, where the window faced north-west and, on the rare clear evenings, the hills rose over the car park as if someone had drawn them in one line with a biro they never lifted.

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He used to do it himself. He'd press a finger to the cold glass and follow the ridge: up from the left in a long shoulder, then the sharp point in the middle that he swore was the only peak in the county worth the name, then down again to the right in a sigh. 'Don't you dare get that wrong,' he said once, when I was nine and didn't know what he meant. He had come up from the pit as a lad, and those hills were the only thing in the valley that never asked him for anything.

Tonight the glass was streaked with rain and the hills were a rumour. I stood at the window with the bag at my feet and tried to find the peak, but the sky had gone the colour of wet slate and there was nothing to trace. The nurse had said he might not know me by the weekend. I pressed my finger to the glass anyway and drew the line the way he had, up, over, down, and the cold came through my fingertip and stayed there.

When I turned round he was awake, watching my hand on the window with his old attention. 'Left shoulder's too low,' he said, and then, slower, 'you'll have to go higher.' I went back to the glass and drew it again, higher, and this time the line held.