Fine line matching tattoos of stick figure girls holding a connecting string across three pairs of lower legs, one with a small red balloon.

Matching stick figures on three calves

Fine line · Calf · Mixed · Photo

Three pairs of lower legs sit side by side, each with a simple stick figure in a striped dress, linked by a thin black string that runs across the frame. The linework is fine and uniform in black with no shading, and small red details appear on one figure's lips and on a balloon held by the figure on the right. The composition is close and centred, with the figures arranged so the string joins them into one continuous line.

Fine line Calf Stick figure String Balloon Girl Matching tattoo Dress

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last night of the fair, and the generator van has already started coughing behind the dodgems. Ruth buys the red balloon from the man with the cart for forty pence and no change, then ties its string to your wrist before you can argue. Jess knots a length of garden twine round her own wrist and then, because she is Jess, round Ruth's too, so the three of you stand in the mud by the candyfloss stall like paper dolls someone has pinned to a washing line.

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You walk the Ferris wheel queue that way, arms up, turning. Nobody minds. The operator, a man called Dennis with a stub of pencil behind one ear, says the wheel stops at eleven and the trucks leave at six, so you have until then to decide where you are going. Jess says Scarborough. Ruth says anywhere with a sea that doesn't smell of diesel. You say nothing, because the balloon keeps tugging, and it is easier to watch it than their faces.

At five past six the trucks are already sliding out past the church. You are standing in the lay-by with the twine still knotted and the balloon pulling at your hand like a dog that has seen a cat. Ruth slips her knot first. Jess follows. Then there is only you, the red thing lifting over the hedge, and a string that goes nowhere at all.

You wait until the last caravan has gone, then walk home with the cut end swinging. Two weeks later a postcard arrives from Scarborough, a picture of a pier on the front. On the back, in Jess's round capitals, it says only: YOU KEPT THE STRING. You had. It is coiled in the drawer beside your bed, and you have never once untied it.