Black and grey tattoos of an ornate padlock and a skeleton key, one on each of two wrists and forearms.

Padlock and key tattoos on two wrists

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two arms are shown close together, each with a black and grey tattoo. The upper wrist carries an ornate padlock with scrolling filigree, and the lower forearm carries a skeleton key with decorative bow and bit. The linework is bold and the shading is soft, with light greys giving the metal a rounded, dimensional look against plain skin.

Forearm Padlock Key Scrollwork Filigree Lock

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the loose boards by the bandstand, because this floor has heard more secrets than any priest. The Marrowgate Palais closed its doors every October, and every October Mr Ashdown the caretaker fastened the great iron padlock through the staff door, all scrolls and leaves like a church gate. Only one key fitted it. He hung that key on a cord round his neck and went home to his bad chest.

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The winter of the flood, a young fiddler named Dolly Frane came to play the last dance before the shutters. She had a habit of humming while she tuned, and that humming reached the caretaker's wife, who reached her husband, and somewhere between the three of them the key went missing. Dolly swore she had never touched it. The town swore she had. By Christmas the Palais stood locked with nobody to open it, and the band played their farewell in the street under the gaslamp, rain running off their bows.

It was Dolly who found it in March, tangled in the lining of her own fiddle case. The bow had snagged a loop of brass, and there it hung: a skeleton key, its bit worn bright as a tooth, its bow curled like a fern. She carried it to the staff door at midnight. The padlock gave with a sound like a held breath let out, and inside the empty hall the chandeliers swayed though no window had been opened.

She did not dance alone. The fiddle went up, the lamps came on one by one, and every couple who had ever waltzed on those boards stepped out of the dust to take the floor. When Ashdown came down the stairs at dawn he found the padlock hanging open on its hook, the key lying on the top step, and a single waltz still ringing under the rafters.