Colour tattoo of green and blue fish scales with small bubbles on the side of a person's torso, above the hip.

Green scales with bubbles on the side of the torso

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A tattoo of overlapping green and blue scales forms a fish-tail or mermaid-style patch on the side of the torso, with three small grey bubbles rising above it. The scales are shaded with darker blue at the edges and lighter green in the centres, giving them some depth. The tattoo sits in the centre of the frame against a plain skin background, with a navel piercing visible to the right.

Ribs Scale Fish scale Bubble

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The pumps at Hollin Drift were switched off the spring my brother turned fourteen, and by August the water had climbed to the lip of the old shaft. Dad said it would settle. Nan said it would not, because something had moved in under the slag heaps and was keeping the level up on purpose.

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Danny and I went down the bank on the Saturday with a jam jar and a torch, past the fence with the faded NO TRESPASSING sign, and crouched by the black water. Bubbles were coming up in a slow line, three together, then a gap, then three more. Danny swore they were gas. I wanted them to be breath. We saw the scales first, a scatter of them on the wet concrete, green as bottle glass, each one no bigger than a thumbnail and edged in a blue like the inside of a mussel shell.

I picked one up and it did not feel like a fish's. It felt like a roof tile warmed by the sun. Nan had told me the drowned keep their tails for a year and a day, then trade them to the water for legs or for their names. I pocketed the scale. That night I lay awake listening to the pump house tick as it cooled, and I pictured the thing under the slag, counting its scales with a patient hand.

In the morning the scale was gone from my jumper pocket. On the pit-head gate, where the paint still said 1974, there were three wet grey pebbles set in a neat row, each one a bubble that had decided to stay.