Black and grey pentagram set inside a sun with flame-like rays, with two small bat silhouettes, on the upper back near the neck.

Pentagram sun and bats on upper back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A pentagram sits inside a ring within a sun-like circle of pointed rays, with two small bat silhouettes flying off to the upper right. The linework is bold and solid, with soft grey shading toward the edges of the rays and ring. The tattoo is shown in black and grey on bare skin, with a hand with black nail polish resting at the back of the neck above it.

Blackwork Back Pentagram Sun Ray Bat Circle Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bats come out of the belfry at ten to seven, just as Aunt Vera's cake is wheeled past the lych gate, and you watch them scatter over the marquee while the vicar hunts for his reading. Nessa tugs your sleeve and says the sun has gone the wrong way round. She means the sign above the vestry door, a ring of flame with a five-pointed star caught in its middle, which your grandfather swore kept the damp out of the stone and the wrong sort of guest away from the altar.

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You laugh, then you don't. The vicar is new, up from Leeds, and has never heard of the star. Cousin Billy has been drinking since noon and stands on a chair reading the vows off his phone, and the bats keep coming, wheeling low as though they have been invited. One drops over the trestle tables and takes a sliver of ham clean off a plate. Nobody screams. Old Mrs Hadley lifts her glass to it and says, "Evening, Frank," to nobody you can see.

The vows go smoothly enough. You feel the cold band slide onto Nessa's finger, the same brass ring her mother wore, and the vicar says "Let no one put asunder" just as the last light drains off the field. Outside, the bats have gone. You promise to keep the hearth lit and the sun the right way up, and she promises the same, and somewhere high in the tower a bell rings once for no reason anyone can name.