Two matching forearm tattoos: a shaded black and grey game controller and a colour stack of books, each above the words I have lived a thousand lives.

Matching game controller and books on forearms

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

Two forearms show a pair of matching tattoos with the phrase I have lived a thousand lives in dark lettering above each design. The left shows a shaded black and grey game controller with a pad below it, using soft greys for form and highlights. The right shows a stack of three books in colour, with a teal top cover, tan and brown spines and red bookmarks, drawn with fine outlines.

Realism Forearm Book Quote Lettering Matching tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The power went at ten past seven, which Maureen said was the building's way of making us talk. Owen had come up three flights with a grey controller under his arm and a face like a wet Sunday, because the console lived in the cupboard and the cupboard was in the dark. We sat on the rug with a single church candle between us, its wax spilling onto a saucer, and listened to the lift groaning somewhere below.

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Maureen had a stack of library books on the arm of the settee, all three overdue, one with a red ribbon hanging out of it like a tongue. "You can't play that without electricity," she said, "so you can read instead." Owen said he had read everything worth reading, which was a lie, and she said it was the sort of lie a boy tells when he has reached the part of the game where the castle floods and he cannot swim.

So we traded. I took the controller and Owen took the novel, and for an hour the only sounds were the clicks of his thumbs on a dead pad and my breathing as I tried to remember how to jump a gap without falling into it. Owen read aloud when the candle guttered, a sentence at a time, stopping to ask what a tallow lamp was. I stopped him when I found a hidden door that led nowhere but a painted sky.

Near eleven the lights came back all at once, the fridge shuddering, the television flickering on to a shopping channel. Neither of us moved. Maureen came in with her dressing gown pulled tight and found us in the candlelight, the book face down on Owen's knee and the controller in my lap, switched off. "Well," she said. "Did you live a thousand lives?" Owen shrugged and said he had lost count somewhere around the flood.