Black and grey realism style octopus tattoo with tentacles wrapping around a forearm, shown in a mirror reflection.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Octopus wrapped around a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

An octopus with detailed suckers sits on the outer forearm, its tentacles curling up and around the arm towards the elbow. The shading is fine and heavy in places, giving the body and tentacles a sculpted, engraved look. The mirror behind the arm also reflects the tattooed arm, and the image is otherwise plain with a light, warm background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday, below Sion Lock. Mam says I am not to write in this book when there is work to be done, but the cargo is wet, the tiller is stiff, and I have nothing better to do than wait for the tide to make up its mind.

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Dad's crate came off the Rotterdam steamer last week with no name on it, only a stencil of a crossed anchor and a note saying DO NOT DRAIN. We carried it up the Thames on the Wren, lashed under the tarpaulin between the coal and the cabbages. It has been knocking since Teddington. Last night I put my ear to the slats and heard a slow wet sound, like a hand being pulled out of a bucket.

This morning the lid had lifted a finger's width. Something had worked an arm through the gap and left a row of suckers pressed into the paint, neat as coins in candle wax. Dad said it was the damp. Then he went quiet and fetched the boathook.

We are moored under the old gasworks now. I made a pot of tea and left a cup beside the crate, and the arm has curled round the handle, patient as a kettle on the hob. I think it wants company more than it wants to be rid of us. Dad says we will sell it at Greenwich in the morning. I am not sure which of us he is trying to convince.

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