Colour tattoo of a red octopus with purple-tipped tentacles across a man's upper back and shoulder, in a neo-traditional style.

Red and purple octopus across back and shoulder

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A large octopus fills the upper back and shoulder blade, with its red body and curling tentacles wrapping over the shoulder and down towards the spine. The linework is bold and dark, with smooth shading on the mantle and suckers, and the tentacles fade from red into violet. The vibrant palette stands out against the pale skin, and the design follows the curve of the shoulder.

Neo-trad Back Shoulder Octopus Tentacle Sucker Sea creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The octopus came up the slipway at the turn of the tide, which was the first wrong thing, because nothing with eight arms should climb wet stone. Nan Tresize was mending the long net on the harbour wall and saw it hauling itself over the weed, red as a pillar box and freckled violet at the tips. She did not drop her needle. You do not drop the needle in Porthkerris while the boats are out.

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It stopped at her boots and lifted one arm, slow as a man raising his hat. Caught in the suckers was a wooden boat no longer than a loaf, its green sail gone grey with weather. Nan knew it at once. Her grandson Wilf had carved that sail from an old cough-sweet tin and lost the boat off Dolly Rock the summer before, and he had cried for a week and then stopped asking. She took it from the arm. The octopus let go without fuss and turned one gold eye up at her, unreadable as a magistrate.

Then it did something no fish should do. It pressed one sucker against the stone and held it there, and when it lifted away a neat ring of salt was left behind, drying white in the sun. Another arm, another ring, until a spiral of them ran down the slipway like a path laid out for someone to follow. The octopus went after them, one arm at a time, back into the green water where the rocks dropped away.

The fleet came in at dusk with empty holds. Wilf came up the hill with his hands in his pockets, asking after the boat. Nan set the little vessel on the kitchen windowsill and said only that the sea was giving back what it had taken. In the morning the spiral was still on the slipway, and Wilf was out there counting the rings with his finger, his lips moving, as if the octopus had left him a sum to work out.