Realistic shaded tattoo of a hammer, pliers and hatchet bound together with red rope, placed on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Hammer, hatchet and pliers bound with rope

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a claw hammer, a pair of knurled pliers and a hatchet head stacked vertically and wrapped in loops of red rope. The tools are rendered with grey shading, highlights and a dark outline, giving them a metallic, three-dimensional look. Red and brown tones on the handles and rope contrast with the grey steel, and the design sits centred on the skin with plain background space around it.

Realism Back Hammer Rope

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

At ten past two the call came through the handset clipped to Owen's belt: bed nine on Ward Six, brake seized, a healthcare assistant with both hands on the frame and nobody to help her shift it. He was already on the stairs with his tool bag swinging against his hip. The strap gave way at the second landing, and the claw hammer, the knurled pliers and the hatchet he mostly used for kindling slid out across the lino.

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On Ward Six, Sister Marjorie Quayle stood at the foot of the bed with her arms folded, reading a chart by the glow of the corridor lights. "Don't tell me it's the same brake," she said. Owen knelt, turned the castor and found the pin packed with fluff and a crumb of something sticky. He worked the pliers into the gap, the knurled grip biting, then tapped the hammer's claw against the housing until the pedal gave with a click.

Back in the store cupboard he looked for something to bind the tools with. The strap was beyond saving, so he took a coil of red rope from the laundry dock, the stuff they used to lash mattress trolleys to the vans. He stacked the pliers, the hammer and the hatchet head at the bottom, then wound the rope round them in loops and knotted it hard. It was heavier than it looked, but nothing would slide out of it again.

Marjorie appeared in the doorway with two mugs of tea. She looked at the bundle over his shoulder and said his father had carried his kit the same way, slung on a length of rope, all round the dairy farms of the Wolds. Owen said nothing and took the tea. Upstairs the lift hummed, and somewhere on Ward Six bed nine rolled quietly for the first time in an hour.