Black and grey blackwork tattoo of a faceless masked spirit figure with a white mask, on the forearm, fading to grey at the base.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Masked spirit silhouette on a forearm

Blackwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a hooded, faceless figure with a small white mask face sits near the top of the tattoo, with the robed body extending downwards. The black fill is smooth and dense, and the shading softens to grey at the lower edge where the figure blends into the skin. The tattoo is centred on a pale forearm against white paper towels, with a wooden floor visible in the background.

Blackwork Forearm Spirit Mask Silhouette Hooded figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, the ponies have been fed and the big top won't fall on you tonight, though it's been threatening to since before your mothers were born. The grey man came in through the back gate the week the elephant died, when Mr Verity had sold the last of the spangles to a man from Margate and the band had gone home to Leeds. He had no face to speak of, only a small white mask like the lid of a pudding basin, and a robe as black as the inside of a coal scuttle that dragged through the mud and never came up dirty.

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Nobody stopped him. Nobody could have, not with the bearded lady selling tickets from a deckchair. He drifted past the lion sitting with its paws in its own water bucket, past the strongman's patched canvas, and stopped at Mrs Dacre's booth where she was counting coins into a biscuit tin. She had nothing left to sell but bread, so she tore off the heel of the loaf and held it out. He took it under his mask and ate for a long time, and the bottom of his robe went paler and paler, like a sleeve that had been left on the line.

He wanted to stay. He offered gold, which turned to beech leaves in the lamplight, and Mrs Dacre laughed until she had to sit down on the tin. Then he looked up at the big top, sagging at its middle, and she told him the only thing the circus had ever needed was a centre pole mended. So he took the broken pole onto his shoulder and worked through the night without a sound, and by morning the tent stood taller than it had in twenty years.

Mr Verity came out at dawn to find the canvas tight and no one under it but a little white mask lying in the sawdust, looking up at the sky as if it had never once been lonely. That's the only reason, children, the Pennywhistle Brothers are still playing Bridlington. Now, who has taken the last of the toffees?