Neo-traditional colour tattoo of a pale, wide-eyed ghoulish character with wild hair and a striped suit and tie, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ghoulish character in striped suit on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A pale, wide-eyed character with wild, spiky hair and a toothy grin stands in a striped suit and tie. The shading is smooth and painterly, with dark outlines, grey tones in the suit and bold highlights on the face. Vivid pink and purple wash fills the background behind the figure, and a blue surface is visible around the arm.

Neo-trad Upper arm Character Suit Tie

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The guard at Hollin Ford kept his stamp in a biscuit tin, because the ink dried out in damp weather and the river was damp every day of the year. When the mist came off the water that Tuesday and the current ran the colour of cordial, he heard the gate chain rattle before any lamp showed on the far bank.

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The traveller wore a jacket of grey and black stripes, pinstriped like a bookmaker's ledger, with a tie knotted too tight for comfort. His hair stood up in a yellow flare as though the wind had given up on him. He smiled with all his teeth. "Papers," said the guard. The traveller drew a folded sheet from an inside pocket. It was blank on every page except one line in violet ink: Let me cross and I will not stay.

The guard had seen forgeries and bribes, and once a goat with a passport. He told the traveller the old rule, that nothing living crosses the ford without paying the toll of a true story. The traveller laughed, a sound like a wet hinge, and told of a wedding in a town that no longer existed, where the cake was built of salt and the bride walked backwards up the aisle so she would not have to see the groom. He talked for an hour. The mist came back and the guard wrote nothing down.

At dawn the gate stood open and the ford ran clear and brown. On the desk lay the blank sheet, now marked with a neat stamp in pink. The guard never again opened the biscuit tin without smelling salt. Whoever came back through that gate, he told the village children, would have to bring a better story, and he would know it at once by the pink on the water.