Four small colour tattoos on the middle finger segments of a clenched hand: a red balloon, a yellow lightning bolt, a grey alien head and a rocket.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Four small emoji tattoos across the fingers

Hand · Mixed · Photo

Four small tattoos sit one per finger on a clenched hand: a red balloon with a thin string, a yellow lightning bolt, a grey alien head with black eyes and a smile, and a grey rocket with red and orange flames. The designs use bold black outlines with flat fills and simple shading, and each is kept small and evenly spaced. The plain white towel behind the hand keeps the focus on the tattoos, while a tattooed forearm and blue ink marks on the knuckles are visible in the background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pardoe kept the claw machine at the end of Marine Parade, squeezed between the donkey rides and a shuttered chip shop, and in eleven summers she had never let anybody win the alien. It sat in the top corner of the glass, grey-faced and grinning, beside a red balloon that had gone pale from the sun. Boys came in with pockets full of two-pence pieces and left with nothing but lint on their fingers.

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On a wet Tuesday at the end of August, a girl of about nine pressed her nose to the glass and asked whether the balloon was for sale too. Mrs Pardoe told her the balloon was not a prize, it was only there to make the machine look cheerful. The girl considered this for a long moment, then pointed at the yellow lightning bolt on the price card and said it ought to be given to anyone brave enough to try. Mrs Pardoe laughed, which surprised them both, and rattled a handful of coins into the slot.

The claw wobbled, dithered, and closed on the alien's big black head. It lifted, swung past the balloon, and held. For three long seconds nobody breathed. Then the grip loosened and the alien dropped straight back into the heap of plush, as if it had changed its mind.

The girl didn't cry. She shrugged, said the rocket probably needed more fuel, and walked out into the drizzle with her hands in her pockets. Mrs Pardoe watched her go, then reached in, fished out the alien herself, and set it gently on the counter beside the till. Some things, she decided, were only worth keeping until somebody worth giving them to came along.

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From the plentytattoo archive, uploaded by a user. Is this your work? Ask for credit or removal.