Black and grey octopus tattoo with pink, teal and gold geometric accents, wrapping around the outer forearm.

Octopus tattoo on a forearm

Forearm · Mixed · Photo

An octopus with curling tentacles is drawn across the outer forearm, with its head near the elbow and tentacles spiralling down towards the wrist. The linework is dark and fine, with stippled dots and grey shading across the head and suckers. Small pink, teal and gold triangular shapes are scattered around the octopus as colour accents against the black and grey work.

Forearm Octopus Tentacle Geometric shape

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dolores Quayle swept the sprung floor of the Pavilion every night after the last waltz, and for three weeks she had been finding things that did not belong to a dance hall. A triangle of teal card, soft with damp. A gold sequin by the bandstand steps. A pink paper point tucked under the piano lid, as if someone had been measuring the room with it. The trail ended at the trapdoor beneath the stage, the one that opened onto the old aquarium tank nobody had filled since the war.

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She lifted the hatch with the broom handle and found the water black and perfectly still. Then a pale head rose out of it, eyes like wet pennies, and an arm curled up the tiled wall to lay another sequin on the lip, neat as a card dealer. "Those are for my dress," Dolores said. The octopus considered her, took the sequin back, and folded it carefully into the hollow of its arm with a patience she recognised from her mother's needlework.

Walter from the fish market had asked her to Saturday's Rhythm Night, the first time anyone had asked her for anything but a sweep. She had nothing to wear. So she made a bargain at the edge of the tank in her stockinged feet: every shape she brought down, the octopus would match with a sequin, one for each triangle. It kept its side without fail, sliding the gold across the tiles like coins on a counter. By Friday she had enough to stitch a hem.

On Saturday the floor glittered with triangles, pink and teal and gold, arranged in spirals that led from the bandstand to the trapdoor. Walter spun her across them, laughing, and never noticed that the dance was not his own. Below, something pale kept turning slowly in the dark water, keeping time with the band.