Black and grey octopus tattoo with stippled shading on the inner forearm, shown against a dark background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tattoo on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey octopus with a rounded head and eyes, its curling tentacles spreading down the forearm. The head and body are built from fine stippled dots, while the tentacles use dark outlines and suckers drawn in ink. The subject sits centrally on the forearm against a plain black background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The tide took the west stair again on Tuesday, so I have been living in the chapel room where the roof still holds. You will laugh, but the sea has started sending us visitors. Mr Abernethy from the parish found a crab the size of a dinner plate in the moat, and yesterday the boy from the farm brought up a thing he swore was an octopus, its arms knotted round a lobster pot as if it had been waiting for it.

I did not believe him until I saw the marks. Each sucker printed on the stone sill of the lower gate, dozens of them in neat rows, the way someone might press a seal into wax. Whatever it was, it had come up through the drain grate, read the tide tables better than we do, and gone back down before the bell.

Ruth, I have been thinking about the old lord who built this place. The family ledgers say he kept a glass tank in the great hall and paid a diver from Whitby to fill it. My grandmother used to say the creature in the tank was the reason the castle fell: it wanted to go home, and every winter a little more of the walls slid back into the water to make the way easier.

I went down to the drain last night with a lamp. The water was very still and full of stippled light, like a sky after rain. Something turned under the surface, eight pale lengths unspooling, and then it simply let me see it, one eye open, patient as a clerk. I did not speak. I left it a lantern's worth of oil and a tin of pilchards on the step.

This morning the tin was empty and the sill had fresh prints. Come at Easter, and bring your good boots.

Yours, Margaret

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