Black and grey realism tattoo of a roaring dinosaur with open jaws and raised claws, placed on the upper thigh.

Roaring dinosaur on an upper thigh

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large dinosaur, resembling a theropod, is shown mid-stride with its head turned back, jaws open to reveal rows of teeth and its clawed forelimbs raised. The linework is fine and the body is built up with stippling and shading to give texture to the scaly skin, the tail and the musculature. The piece is entirely black and grey on pale skin, and the design fills the outer thigh against a plain, softly lit background.

Realism Upper arm Dinosaur Teeth Claw Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ward 9 goes quiet after the two o'clock obs, and that is when the lift decides to break. I was pushing a trolley of clean linen past bay four when Sister Pat caught my sleeve and said Mr Halloran wanted a word, and that he would not take no for an answer from anyone under sixty.

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Walter Halloran had spent forty years at the slate quarry above Blaenau before his chest gave out, and he kept a drawing in his locker for as long as I had known him. It was a theropod, copied from a library book onto the back of an old wage slip, all hunched shoulders and long stride, its head twisted round over one shoulder as if something behind it had just called its name. The jaws were open. He had drawn every tooth.

"Get me the drawing, lad," he said. "And hold it up to the wall." I didn't ask why. I held the slip against the plaster where the amber night lights fell, and the grey crosshatching seemed to gather itself into the paint, the great back legs bunching as if to step out of the frame. Halloran watched from his pillow and said the big ones never look back at you unless they mean to be seen.

He asked me to put it away before Pat came round. I slid it under his pillow and took the lift down, which had mended itself by then. Somewhere above the nurses' station a long roar rolled along the corridor, low and rough as gravel, and I told myself it was only the boiler. I didn't look back. Halloran's bell was ringing, and I had a feeling it would keep ringing until morning.