Black ink tattoo covering a person's whole back in a symmetrical pattern of spirals and scrolls, with the figure photographed from behind against a dark background.

Full back spiral tattoo

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A person is photographed from behind, showing a large symmetrical tattoo that covers the full back from the shoulders to the waistband. The design is built from interlocking spirals, scrolls and curved bands, with solid black areas framing lighter skin in between. The ink is entirely black, and the dark backdrop makes the lines stand out clearly across the centred composition.

Blackwork Back Spiral Scroll Abstract pattern

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stair turns to the left going up, and you have counted it so often that the number has stopped being a number. Ninety-seven steps, cold iron worn to a dip in the middle of each one, the rail sweating in July. Your uncle used to say the tower was built by someone who wanted you to arrive dizzy. You arrive dizzy every night, carrying the can of paraffin against your hip, and stop on the landing to let your breath come back.

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The lamp runs on a clockwork train that drops a weight down the centre of the tower like a plumb line. Every four hours it has to be wound, and the cord uncoils through the dark, slow as a tide going out. You wind it by feel. Mr Leask from the mainland office sent a letter last winter asking why the log showed a gap at two in the morning, and you wrote back that the sea does not keep office hours, and that you had been awake for it.

The storm came in from the north-west on the Tuesday. The beam sweeps the water in a slow spiral, and the light flickers off the black glass panes so that the whole tower seems to breathe. Out past the Carrick rocks a small boat showed its own lantern, then lost it, then found it again, turning in a circle as if it were trying to read your light. You kept the wick high and the glass clean until the lantern steadied and came in on the swell.

In the morning you chalked a spiral on the slate by the door, the way your uncle did, tightening it into the centre until the line ran out of room. It did not look like a map. It looked like something that wanted to be followed inward, and you sat down on the bottom step to watch the sun find the boat's wake, the stair still ringing faintly under your boots.