A hand with a dark tattoo with green accents on the forearm holds a blue plastic toy tattoo machine beside a box of pipe cleaners and temporary tattoo sheets.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hand holding a toy tattoo machine

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A styled product photograph on a white surface shows a hand holding a blue plastic toy tattoo machine. The forearm carries a tattoo with dark linework and teal and green shading, though most of the design is cropped out of frame. Nearby props include a clear box of coloured pipe cleaners with a 'Mini Tattoo Machine' label, a pencil, red and white twine and temporary tattoo sheets showing a dog and a turtle.

Forearm Hand Temporary tattoo Pencil Dog Turtle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The little blue machine had been buzzing since breakfast, and by four o'clock Nell had stopped pretending it was the radiator. It sat on the counter of Pennywhistle's Toys with its coil bound in red and white twine, and each time the wind came through the open door it gave a sulky tick, as if it had been promised something proper and been handed a box of pipe cleaners instead.

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"It wants a proper job," said Mr Okafor from the back room, not looking up from the crate of tin soldiers he was pricing. He had bought the whole stock from a bankrupt pier shop in Scarborough and had a soft spot for anything that came with a grievance. Nell picked the machine up. Its needle was a stub of painted beech, and when she tapped it against the sheet of temporary tattoos, the turtle lifted off the paper slowly, the way a stamp lets go of an envelope that has been held over a kettle.

The turtle did not want to be a sticker. It wanted a shell with some weight to it, and a pencil line along the rim of the counter was apparently not enough. By closing time it had walked down the till, along the twine, and into the open lid of the pipe cleaner box, where the teal ones had been sorted into a little heap like pebbles. The dog on the next sheet woke with a start, sniffed the air, and gave up on being a dog altogether, trotting after the turtle with its ears flat.

When Mr Okafor came out to lock up, the shop was quiet and the blue machine had stopped ticking. The lid of the box was empty. On the floor by the door lay a single teal pipe cleaner, bent into the neat, ridged curve of a shell, and beside it a faint line of footprints heading out into the rain.