Black and grey ribbed, spine-like tattoos run along the index and little fingers of a hand held in a rock gesture.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Ribbed black tattoos on two fingers

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised in a rock gesture with the index and little fingers extended, and each extended finger carries a tattoo of a ribbed, segmented pattern. The linework is dark and shaded to suggest depth, fading toward the knuckles and the fingertips. The image is shot close up against a dark background, with the tattoos as the clear focus.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Oldham Lock believed Mrs Harrap when she said the canal walked. She said it every Thursday, with her thumb tucked in and her index and little fingers raised over the bar like a pair of bent horns, and Joe Kershaw, who ran the eel pots, would laugh and top up her glass.

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The thing she meant came up the towpath after the last barge of the night, a long grey shape that clicked as it moved. Joe saw it once from the lock gate. It had ribs, ridged and segmented, like a cod's spine left to dry on a rack, and it stopped where the water met the stone and listened.

Mrs Harrap's late husband had cut the channel with his own hands, and he had told her that anything that walks a canal wants a line to follow. So she taught Joe the sign. Two fingers up, the rest folded against the palm, held near the mouth of the lock. Don't wave it, she said. Show it the horns and keep your back to the water.

Joe did it the Thursday the rain came sideways and the lamp at the lock failed. He raised his hand into the cold, felt the damp in his fingers, and watched the shape turn its long head towards him. Then it slid back down into the black water, ribs clicking, and the canal was only a canal again. He kept the sign. Some nights he still makes it at the lamp, and some nights the water answers.

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