Full colour tattoo of the video game characters Mario and Luigi running across the forearm, with bold outlines and cartoon shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Mario and Luigi running on a forearm

Forearm · Colour · Photo

The tattoo shows the cartoon characters Mario and Luigi mid-run, with Mario in front and Luigi behind, both with raised arms. The linework is bold and dark, with flat fills and soft shading on the overalls, caps and skin. Red, blue, green and skin tones dominate against the pale arm, and the figures sit diagonally on the forearm with the background out of focus.

Forearm Cartoon

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift on the east side has been stalling since Tuesday, so when the bell goes at ten past two you are not surprised to find the two of them already on the wrong side of the doors, red cap and green cap, mid-stride. Mario is out front as always, one fist punched at the ceiling. Luigi trails him by a step, certain he heard something on the stairs.

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Night sister Okafor-Lind, who has run Ward 7 for nineteen years and does not run for anybody, watches them thunder past the linen cupboard and says only, "Tell me the pipes are fine." You tell her they are not. The day room ceiling has been dripping since October, and the brothers promised the early shift they would have it sorted by midnight. It is past two. A bucket sits under the stain like a patient waiting for its turn.

They take the stairs two at a time. You follow with a drip stand you were meant to return, its wheels squealing on the lino, and find them in the basement boiler room. Mario is wedged under a pipe, Luigi is holding a torch in his teeth, and the leak is a sulky trickle from a joint rusted the colour of old pennies. Luigi tightens it with a spanner longer than his forearm. Mario whoops, then hushes himself, because a man in bay four is sleeping behind the wall.

By half three the ceiling is dry and the bucket is empty. The brothers climb back into the lift, which, for once, goes up without a shudder. They pull their caps straight, grin at you through the closing doors, and are gone. Somewhere above, the bell from bay four rings once more, and you realise it is the only thing on the ward that has not stopped running all night.