Black and white outline of a Guy Fawkes mask with pink cheeks on the forearm, on a pale blue background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Guy Fawkes mask on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A photograph of a forearm bearing a design of a Guy Fawkes mask, with black linework for the eyebrows, eyes, moustache and goatee, and pink blush on the cheeks. The mask sits on a clear, slightly raised backing, so it may be a temporary tattoo or transfer rather than an inked tattoo. The plain pale blue background keeps the focus on the design.

Forearm Mask Face Eyebrow Moustache

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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 press in the back of the Wapping Stacks still smells of ink and warm resin when the courier arrives before the shift bell. Mira has left a crate under the bench with a tag reading forty-one, twelve, nine, and she wants it gone before the drones make their second sweep of the lower terraces. You lift the first one out. The moulded face is pale as a boiled egg, its painted brows arched in mild surprise, a red wash of blush on each cheek, the kind of cheeks that look as though someone has just told a joke they are not allowed to laugh at.

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Mira's rule is simple. No name goes on the sheet. Every mask is sold for cash to a person you will never see, and every sticker is peeled from its backing by hand, so nothing can be traced back to the press. The sheets are clear film, slightly raised, and they stick to anything: sleeves, hoardings, the flat faces of the old bus shelters where the council's smiling portraits still hang behind the glass. Last month a boy in Deptford stuck one over a watch-tower lens and the tower went blind for an hour. Mira counted it a victory. The council counted it a fault.

Tonight the crate is heavier than usual. Beneath the masks you find a folded note in handwriting you do not know, asking for two hundred more and a darker blush, "for the ones who are going to be seen." You stand at the bench a long time. The press hums. Outside, the second sweep crosses the rooftops, its light sliding down the wet glass and stopping, for once, on nothing at all.

You take the crate, leave the note where it lies, and go out onto the terraces with the masks held flat against your chest. Nobody looks up. Every face you pass is already turned away, and you notice, as you climb the stairs, that a good number of them are wearing a face that is not their own.