Black and grey tattoo of an old map with a compass rose, mountains and a flying figure above, with a quote in script, across the side of the ribs.

Map and compass rose on the ribs

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey map sits on the side of the ribs, showing rocky peaks, waves and a compass rose, with a quote in cursive script along the bottom. A thin outline of a flying figure rises above the map's top edge. The linework is crisp and the shading gives the map a worn, aged paper look against the skin.

Ribs Map Compass rose Mountain Wave Flying figure Script Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit down on the bottom step where the light still works, because the lift has been dead since Easter and I am not telling this story to the back of your heads from eleven floors up. Mrs Adeyemi's grandson had a map. Not a proper one, mind. He drew it on the back of a gas bill with a biro that kept skipping, and on it were mountains like broken teeth, waves made of little hooks, and a compass with its north pointing straight at the lift shaft.

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Everyone on Harrow Point knew the map was nonsense. The mountains were the ones behind the bins, the waves were the puddles in the car park, and nobody had ever found the second star to anything. But Danny read the words along the bottom every morning while the kettle rumbled: second star to the right, and straight on 'till morning. He said it like a register at school. He said it when the bailiffs came up the stairs, and he said it in the hospital corridor the winter his mum's breathing went thin and slow.

So one night in July he climbed the stairwell instead of waiting for the lift, past the graffiti owl and the smell of somebody's curry, and he kept on going past the eleventh floor until the roof door groaned open. The wind took the gas bill clean out of his hand. He watched it spin over the estate, a small pale kite, until it dropped beyond the motorway.

The next morning the sky above the car park was a hard clean blue, and far off, past the cranes, a row of real peaks stood up pale as paper. Danny didn't say a word about it. He just filled the kettle, put two mugs on the side, and asked me if I fancied walking up to see them. Now come on, the stairs won't climb themselves.