Colour tattoo of a red octopus with yellow suckers on the top of a foot, with a second foot wearing a turquoise bead anklet beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Red octopus tattoo on a foot

Traditional · Other · Colour · Photo

A red and orange octopus with yellow suckers and curling tentacles sits across the top and outer side of a foot. The bold dark outlines and flat, solid colour fill give it a traditional feel, with light shading on the body. A second bare foot with painted purple toenails and a silver chain anklet with turquoise beads is visible on the right against a neutral carpet.

Traditional Other Octopus Tentacle Sea creature Anklet Toenails

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The tank had cracked in March, and by June the Pell and Marlowe Travelling Marvels had stopped pretending otherwise. Dora Pell pressed a bucket of cold harbour water against the glass and watched the octopus take it in. Nobody in Skegness had paid to see the eight-armed wonder since the big top sprang its second leak. The octopus, whom the bills still called Admiral Scarlet, was the last thing the family owned that anyone wanted.

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Her father had bought him off a trawlerman at Grimsby for two pounds and a bottle of rum. Dora remembered the day because the creature had lifted one arm and inked the glass orange, as if he meant to leave his mark on the place. 'He's a grand old thing,' her father used to say, polishing the brass ring over the pay box. Now the ring was green, and the old man was in the churchyard beside the ghost train.

On the last night of the season she lifted the lid and he came up her arm, cool and suckered, each grip a small deliberate question. The yellow spots along his arms caught the lamp. She carried him across the wet field past the dark caravans to the sea wall, where the tide was coming in grey and steady.

She set him down on the rocks. He stayed a moment, then unfurled himself across the weed with a slowness that looked like thinking. At the edge of the water he paused, turned once, and she swore he lifted one arm in farewell before the wave took him. Dora walked back to the empty tent with her hands smelling of salt and, for the first time in a year, nothing left to sell.