Circular badge design of a snarling black panther head biting a red gasoline can labelled GASOLINE, with a flame, a sparkle and a water drop on a yellow background.

Panther head with gasoline can badge

Colour · Flash

A round badge design showing a snarling black panther head with red eyes, biting into a red gasoline can labelled GASOLINE. A red flame, a white sparkle and a white water drop sit around the can, and the words I HAD TO BURN THE ONES WHO BURNED ME curve around the border with CRUEL HAND below. The bold flat linework has a black outline, with yellow, red, black and white fills and a slight grainy texture.

Panther Flame Sparkle Badge Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The generator coughs behind the dodgem pen, and you are already counting the cans under the lorry seat: six of them, each with GASOLINE stencilled down the side in Gilbert's careful hand. Gilbert taught you to throw knives in this same field the summer your mother's caravan still sat on its blocks. Then he sold the ground beneath it to the council, and the caravan went up with her inside, and the fair moved on the Monday as if nothing had happened.

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The Wall of Death is fenced off at the far end, where the men drink after the last show. You walk the sawdust with the can against your hip, past the candy floss machine ticking over and the hook-a-duck sign blinking its tired lamps. The pump tap drips into the trough. Your grandmother used to say water only steals what fire takes outright, and you believed her then. You pour the first line along the bottom of the trailer steps, slow, the way you'd lay a wire across a gap.

The matchbook is in your pocket. Ten yards off, the lights dip and come back, and in that flicker you see Gilbert's shadow stretched across the wagon wall, laughing with someone at the bar. You lift the can higher. Then a child in a yellow cagoule darts between you and the steps, chasing a balloon that has slipped its string from the lucky dip. It bobs up past the rigging into the dark, and you stand there with the match unstruck until it is only a speck of light above the Ferris wheel.

In Hull by Thursday, you screw the cap on and carry the can back to the lorry, setting it upright beside the others where the petrol smell soaks into your sleeves. Gilbert will be looking for the fire. Let him look for a while.