Traditional style tattoo on the thigh showing a hand gripping a stake, red carnations, a banner reading INTO EVERY GENERATION A SLAYER IS BORN and a red gem with a B.

Hand with stake, banner and carnations

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A traditional style tattoo shows a hand gripping a wooden stake, with two red carnations and a yellow and red ribbon banner bearing the quote INTO EVERY GENERATION A SLAYER IS BORN. Below, a red oval gem with a pearl-style border holds a large letter B, and green leaves fill the gaps. Bold black outlines and flat fills in red, yellow, green and skin tones are set against the leg in a close crop.

Traditional Thigh Hand Banner Carnation Flower Gem Pendant Quote Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, shush, and keep your hands off the lift doors, they bite. Look at that stairwell light flickering like it's got something to say. That's the fourteenth floor of Harrow Point, and the women in our family have been climbing these stairs at three in the morning since before your mum was a glint. Mavis went first. She carried a length of ash in her good coat, sharpened on the back step, and she never once let anyone see her hand shake.

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The rule she gave my mother, and my mother gave me, is simple. Every generation there's one girl who sees what lives under the bins and down the sluice room, and every generation she's told it's her job. Nobody asks. There used to be a banner painted on the community hall wall, red and gold, with carnations either side like a funeral wreath. Nobody thought it was odd until the flowers went brown.

Then there was our Brenda, nineteen, mouthy, wouldn't go near the stairs. Summer of the power cut, something came up the lift shaft on the cable, and Brenda walked straight at it with the stake held like a bread knife. She got it in. Then she sat down on the landing and laughed till she cried, filthy to the elbows and prouder than I've ever seen anyone.

So when you're fourteen and someone's kicking your door at midnight, you know what to do. Take the gold B off the hook, the one Brenda wore on her wrist. Count the floors down. And don't you dare tell the council about the smell.