Black ink sketch in a notebook of an ornate key with a keyhole, a star, a chain and swirling linework, drawn as a tattoo design.

Ink sketch of a key and star design

Black and grey · Flash

A black ink drawing in an open notebook shows an ornate key with a decorative bow and a shaft ending in a keyhole-shaped bit. A star with pointed petals, a chain, a small round charm and curling swirls surround the key, with a heart-like loop at the top. The linework is bold and clean on cream paper, with solid black areas for shadow and no colour.

Key Keyhole Star Chain Charm Swirl Heart Sketch

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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 lost property clerk at Hallow Cross slides the brass key across the counter before you have finished describing it, as if she has been waiting all week for someone to ask. A star on the bow, you say, and a chain with a round charm, the sort with two black ears on it. She nods and holds the key up to the strip light, and the shaft throws a shadow shaped like a door that does not exist.

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Nobody has claimed it in eleven years. The docket says a porter handed it in on the night the last northbound was cancelled, wrapped in a sheet of yesterday's Gazette and tied with fishing line. Inside the paper someone had drawn the same star in biro, five points, one of them bent as if it had been pressed hard against a wall.

You take it up to platform four because the clerk says the locker it fits was never emptied. The bank of grey doors is rusted at the hinges, and only number thirteen accepts the bit. When the bolt gives, it makes a sound like a breath let out after a long wait. Inside there is a shoebox, a pressed flower in a card that has faded to the colour of weak tea, and a folded timetable with one departure circled in red pencil.

You close the door gently. Overhead the departure board clicks through its letters and settles on a destination nobody has bought a ticket for in years. You slip the charm into your coat pocket, where it knocks once against your ribs, then again, like a train coming in under the floor.