Realism style tattoo on a forearm showing a grey shaded gas mask above a red rose, with a hand-like form below.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gas mask and red rose on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A shaded gas mask with a dark hood sits at the top of the forearm, with a single red rose in the centre. Below the rose, greyscale shading suggests a hand or fingers. The black and grey shading is smooth and detailed, and the red rose is the only strong colour, which draws the eye.

Realism Forearm Rose Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The train from Leeds is late again, and you stand under the iron canopy holding a cardboard box that smells of rubber and tin. Inside lies a child's gas mask, its round eyepieces misted where someone has breathed against them. The stationmaster has told you twice already to keep the boxes dry, so you keep turning your back to the wind and waiting.

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Mrs Pilling comes up the platform at a half run, one hand pressed to her hat. She carries a single dark red rose from her back garden, its stem wrapped in damp newspaper. She wants it pinned to the label on her son's box, just under his name, where the ink has already started to run. You tell her the guard will likely pull it off before the carriage doors close. She nods as if she expected that and asks you to hold it anyway, so you do, and the petals bruise a little against your thumb.

When the engine finally breathes out its heavy steam, the children come down the platform in a ragged line, each with a case swinging from a string at their hip. Albert Pilling stops in front of you. He does not look at the label. He takes the rose, pushes the stem through the strap of his case instead, and marches on toward the carriage with his chin up.

You count the boxes as they go up into the racks, forty-one of them, grey and identical. Then the doors slam, the whistle goes, and the last thing you can see through the drifting steam is that one red spot, moving slowly away down the length of the train.