Black and grey tattoo of a revolver with the words Never Look Back on its barrel, flanked by two roses and leaves on a forearm.

Revolver and roses on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A revolver fills the centre of the design, with its grip shaded in fine stippled dots and its barrel carrying the words NEVER LOOK BACK. Two roses, one in bud and one open, and several serrated leaves frame the gun, with soft grey shading on the petals and bold dark tones on the foliage. The design is shown in black ink and greys against a pale background, with the forearm filling most of the frame.

Dotwork Botanical Forearm Revolver Gun Rose Leaves Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wedding at Harrowgate Mill was meant to last three days, but on the second morning the bride's father took the old pistol from its nail above the mantel and loaded it with two shots, which was one more than anyone needed for rabbits.

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Nell Carrick had promised her hand to Tom Ashby over a fence post in May, and her father said nothing against it until the banns were read and a cousin from Kendal rode in with a story about a horse sold under false pretences. The cousin wanted the mill. Her father wanted the cousin gone. Nobody asked Nell what she wanted, which she thought was fair, since she had not asked them either.

On the third morning the church bells started early. Tom waited at the lych gate with a borrowed coat and the ring in his fist. Nell came down the lane with roses from the garden tied in her hair, pink buds and one fully blown, and she did not stop walking when the shot cracked over the orchard wall.

Tom took her by the wrist and they ran. Behind them the mill wheel kept turning, and her father's voice called after them that she was a fool to go, and then it called her name, and then it called nothing at all.

They did not look back, not once, not at the kissing gate, not at the river where the water took the sound of the bells away. Some say they reached the coast and sailed for Ireland. Some say they kept a cottage with a lock on the door and a rose bush climbing the wall. The old women in Kirkby Lonsdale tell it differently each Sunday, but they agree on one thing: the pistol went back on its nail, fired only at the sky, and the bride's father watched the mill wheel for the rest of his life, because somebody had to watch the water.