Traditional style tattoo of an NES controller with banners reading TRUE and LOVE on the inner forearm.

NES controller and True Love banner on forearm

Traditional · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A grey-shaded game controller, modelled on the Nintendo Entertainment System pad, fills the centre of the forearm with a scroll banner above and below. The banners carry the words TRUE and LOVE in red and dark lettering, with bold black outlines and soft shading across the controller body. Red accents on the buttons and the controller's small printed text stand out against the otherwise grey and black tones, and the photo is taken at a slight angle with a hand visible at the top.

Traditional Forearm Banner Love Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain came sideways off Penhallow Bay on the third night and took the mains with it, so the only light left in Bellmouth House was the telly in the back parlour, running off a car battery Mrs Hocking's nephew had lugged in from his van. You got the controller with the sticky start button. Dougie got the one with the worn grey face, and he held it the way other men hold a hymn book.

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Nobody else was staying. The Cornish couple in number four had gone home on Tuesday, and the two nurses had driven off to Truro before the lane flooded. So it was just you, Dougie, and a radio cricket commentary that kept cutting out at the important bits. He swore he could beat you at the one with the moustached plumber who jumps. You said the plumber was beside the point. The point was the final castle, which neither of you had ever reached, and which you both agreed was probably a lie told by the people who made the game.

Around midnight the battery gave up. The screen shrank to a white dot and died, and you sat in the dark pressing buttons on pads that did nothing at all. Dougie laughed until he coughed. Then Mrs Hocking came down the stairs with a torch and a tin of shortbread and asked who had won. Neither of you had. She said that was the most sensible thing she had heard all week and left you the tin.

In the morning the sea had gone quiet and the sky was the colour of wet slate. Dougie had left his pad on the arm of the sofa, its cable coiled like something asleep. You picked it up, pressed the red buttons with your thumb out of habit, and found it still warm from the room.