Black and grey rabbit mask tattoo with red hand-lettered quote and red splatter marks on an upper arm, shown in a realism and lettering style.

Rabbit mask and red lettering on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large black and grey rabbit mask with long ears sits at the lower part of the frame, shaded with realistic highlights and soft grey tones. Red hand-lettered text runs down the skin beside it, with red splatter marks and drips around the words, and a partial black and grey design appears at the top right. The photograph is taken close up with a dark vignette, and the red ink contrasts strongly with the grey shading.

Realism Lettering Upper arm Lettering Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nell had been living on the narrowboat Patience for three weeks when she found the mask, wedged behind the coal bunker with a fishing net and a tin of Bovril gone solid. It was grey, the size of a child's head, with ears that folded back along the cabin roof when she tried to stand it upright. Its eyes were two oval holes rimmed with something like old cloth. She should have left it for the next lock keeper. Instead she carried it to the bow and set it on the gunwale, where the water lay flat and brown under the willows.

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Ray, who ran the chandlery at the top of the locks, looked at it the way a man looks at a dog that has bitten him before. 'Where'd you get that?' he asked. 'Behind the coal.' 'Ah.' He turned his cap in his hands. 'Dennis had a thing about that suit. Said it told him when the water was going to rise, and he was right twice, and then he wasn't.'

That night Nell sat on the roof with the mask in her lap and a tin of red enamel, the kind used on lock gates. She had only meant to paint the question, just to see it. The letters came out crooked and dripped down the cabin side as if they had somewhere else to be. WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT, she wrote, though nobody had asked her to wear anything. Rain came over the fields from Warwick and smudged the last word into a red streak.

By morning the paint had run into the canal, pink against the grey water, and the bottom gate had swung open on its own, dropping the level a foot. Ray stood on the towpath with his cap off. The mask sat on the gunwale facing the empty lock, ears pricked, as if it had only been waiting for the water to make up its mind. Nell did not put it back behind the coal. She kept it on the roof and made her tea around it.