Black and grey photo of a shaded realistic tattoo of a flock of bats spreading across a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Flock of bats across upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A flock of bats in flight spreads across the upper back, from the shoulder blade towards the base of the neck, with the largest bat in the centre and smaller bats around it. The wings and bodies are rendered with soft grey shading and fine detail in the membranes and fur. The image is black and white, with the blurred background of a room with shelves visible behind the shoulder.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, you'll not believe what happened at the Palais on Thursday. The band had just struck up 'Stardust' and the lights went down the way Mr Ashby likes them, and then the rafters started to move. Forty or fifty bats came out of the old beams above the balcony, sliding down over the dancers like a dark sheet being shaken out. Nobody screamed. Mrs Cole, who has run the cloakroom since the Coronation, just raised one hand and said the mothballs must have done it.

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I stood at my hatch with a stack of coats and watched them wheel round the chandelier. Every couple on the floor kept shuffling in time as if it had all been arranged. Harold, the trumpet player, didn't miss a note. Only the smallest one, a little thing with a torn wing, kept dropping out of the flock to perch on the lid of the piano, folding up like a pocket watch, then taking off again to catch the others.

By the last waltz they had all gone back up into the dark. Mr Ashby swore he would have the roof seen to, but I don't think he will. I think they'll come back each week for the music. I've started leaving the hatch open a crack on Thursdays, just for them.

Write soon and tell me Mum's hip is better. I'll keep a dance ticket for you if the bats let me.

Love, Dot

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