Photo of a red butterfly swirl tattoo with a soft pink wash and small stars on a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Red butterflies and pink wash on shoulder

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A swirling group of red butterflies, some large and some small, drifts across the upper back near the shoulder blade. Shaded wings with dark outlines sit over a loose pink wash, with small four-pointed stars scattered around the edges. The red and pink colour dominates the composition, and the design is shown in soft natural light against a dark background.

Shoulder Back Butterfly Star Swirl Wash

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Hold still and I'll tell you about the Palais at Hollin Bay, because the floor there was the only thing in that town that never lied. Every Saturday in 1953 the band struck up at eight and the dancers came in off the wet streets with their collars up. Old Mrs Dacre swept the boards before anyone arrived, and she swore the wood still remembered the shape of every foot that had ever turned on it.

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The year the lamps failed, a boy called Tobias Renn came in with a tin of red paint, a pocketful of matches and a debt to the landlord. He had painted butterflies on the ballroom ceiling, one for every dance he had lost. Some were as big as dinner plates, some no larger than a thumbnail, and the whole crowd tipped their heads back and watched them drift across the dark plaster while the saxophone sighed underneath.

Here's the turn. When the paint dried, the butterflies began to move. Not on the ceiling, mind, but in the air above the floor, swirling round the couples in a pink mist like sea fog lit from below. Mrs Dacre said a girl in a green dress stepped into the middle of it and came out smiling, and never again was she seen to limp. Small stars winked at the edges, the way the ballroom lights used to flicker before the generator caught.

So if you go to Hollin Bay now, the Palais is flats and a chippy. But stand in the car park at dusk, and if you see a small red thing lift off the wall and settle on your sleeve, don't brush it away. Dance with it. It has been waiting a long time for somebody to ask.