Side-by-side photos of a grey shaded gecko tattoo on an upper arm, left, and the same skin on the right with the tattoo largely faded after laser removal.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Gecko tattoo on upper arm, before and after removal

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The left photo shows a grey gecko or lizard tattoo on the outer upper arm, with its tail curling up toward the top of the frame. The lizard is rendered with soft grey shading and fine dark outlines. The right photo shows the same area of skin with only a faint grey ghost of the design remaining, and the skin looks slightly lighter and uneven in texture.

Upper arm Lizard Before and after

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gecko had been on the back wall of the Cathedral Street car park since before I started my nights there, grey as wet slate and as long as my forearm, its tail curled up over the cracked render as if it were listening for the last bus. Nobody bothered it. The council sent a man with a pressure washer twice, and both times the grime came off in grey sheets while the lizard stayed exactly where it was, looking down at the bins.

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Eunice worked the barrier booth and knew everything about the building that nobody had written down. She said a gecko drops its tail when something grabs it, and the tail wriggles on the pavement long enough to keep the hunter busy, and then the lizard grows a new one. She said the new tail never matches the old. You can always tell which is the replacement because it has a different kind of shine. I told her that was rubbish, and she told me to go and look at the wall myself.

So at three one wet Tuesday I stood under the sodium lamp with my hands in my pockets. The pressure washer had finally got the last of the dirt off the render, and what was left of the lizard was a ghost, a faint grey shadow with the outline of a foot and the sweep of a tail, pale against the cleaner plaster. Only the tail was still clear. It curled up from the shadow and stopped a hand's width short of where the body used to be.

I thought about Eunice's new tail with its different shine, and about how the thing you cannot quite shift always keeps a little of its shape. Then the first bus came round the corner with its lights on, and the wall stayed just as it was, listening.