Black and grey blackwork octopus tentacle tattoo with rows of ringed suckers running down the outer upper arm of a person in a white t-shirt.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus tentacle tattoo on an upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

The image shows a black and white photograph of a tattoo of an octopus tentacle that curls down the outer arm, beginning under the t-shirt sleeve and tapering towards the elbow. The suckers are drawn as bold outlined circles with solid dark centres, arranged in a staggered line along the tentacle. The person's face is not visible, and the plain white top and dark trousers keep the focus on the tattoo.

Blackwork Upper arm Octopus Tentacle Sucker

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has sealed the Hollin Gate Inn since Tuesday, and you are the only one awake when the kettle stops boiling. Mrs Ashdown has gone up to bed with her wet stockings steaming on the fireguard, and the lamps are turned low. Down in the cellar, where the barrels sit on their oak trestles, something is knocking against the stone, slow and patient, like a fist that has learned to wait.

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You take the lantern down the steps. The flagstones are wet, though no pipe has burst. In the corner by the old drain, a coil of dark rope lies across the floor, and then the rope lifts, and you see the suckers, each one a ring with a black heart, opening and closing in a staggered line down its length. It tastes the air around the lantern flame. It is cold, and it smells of the harbour at Whitby, of tar and kelp, which is impossible, since the sea is forty miles off and buried under white.

The tentacle moves towards the winter ale and wraps the nearest cask, gently, the way a child lifts a cup. You remember your grandfather's ledger and the rule written in its margin: never leave the cellar door unbarred in a hard frost. You think of the drover who paid for his bed in silver and was never seen again on the north road. You say, quietly, that the ale is for the Thursday men, and the tentacle pauses. Then it lets go and draws back into the dark, leaving a ring of salt on the staves.

In the morning the plough cuts through at noon, and the carter asks why the cellar smells of the sea. You pour him a half pint from the cask that was not touched. "Frost," you say, and you bar the door behind you with both hands, and for once you do not look down the steps.