Black and grey realistic octopus tentacles and eye tattoo wrapping across an upper arm and onto the shoulder.

Octopus tentacles and eye on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large octopus design covers the upper arm and shoulder, with curling tentacles lined with rows of suckers and a detailed eye near the top. The tentacles use bold black outlines and soft grey shading, while the skin of the octopus is rendered with smooth tonal gradients and scattered dark spots. The composition wraps around the arm, with tentacles curling down towards the elbow.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The big top came down in Pendleton on Tuesday and the lads had the canvas off the poles before anyone finished their tea. Mr Garrod says we are done with the north now, and the Bellini sisters have already sold their ponies to a farm near Otley. Only the octopus is still ours, and she isn't going anywhere until somebody with a van and a licence comes to fetch her.

I sat with her last night after the last punter had gone home. The tank is a long glass box on trestles with a dribble of seawater that Mr Garrod tops up from a bucket he thinks nobody notices him filling. She knows the sound of my boots now. When I tap the glass her spots darken and run together like spilt ink, then fade back to the colour of old candle wax. Her eye follows me the length of the tank. It is a flat, patient, unfussy thing, and I have started to think she is the only one of us who understood the act was over before the bills did.

This morning one arm had got itself up the side of the glass, curled over the lip and left a row of pale rings printed on the wood of the trestle. I thought you should know she was still trying to leave. Mr Garrod wants to sell her to an aquarium in Scarborough for two hundred pounds. I told him she would take a fortnight to die in a van, and he said she was only a fish, Nell.

I have put a bucket of mussels in the cab for the journey, just in case. Write back soon, and tell Mum she can stop asking after the lion.

Love, Nell

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