Black and grey dotwork tattoo of a rooster-headed astronaut holding a space helmet, placed on the upper thigh.

Rooster astronaut holding a helmet on a thigh

Dotwork · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows an anthropomorphic rooster wearing a spacesuit with a chest control panel, with one arm resting on a reflective space helmet held in front of the body. The figure sits within a pointed shield-like outline that is filled with stippled dots, and the suit and beak are built from fine linework and dotted shading. The design is in black and grey ink and is photographed straight on against a plain light background, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Dotwork Thigh Rooster Astronaut

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are sent up the bell tower ladder at half past nine because the rooster has been sitting on the cross since Thursday, and the vicar will not start the service with a bird looking down on the groom. Below you, the marquee sways with bunting, and Aunt Maud is shouting that the sponge will slump in this heat. Your hands are sticky from the rope. Nobody warned you the tower smelt of pigeons and old oil.

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The rooster does not flinch when you reach the top rung. He sits on the weather vane with his chest puffed out, and the silver suit he wears is buttoned right up to his wattle. Someone has sewn a row of dials onto the front, and a helmet, polished like a pewter moon, rests in the crook of one wing. 'Not until someone tells me what the sky looks like from the inside,' he says, in the flat voice of a man who has been insulted by a vicar.

So you tell him. You describe the bride's nerves, the groom who has rehearsed his vows to the hedgerows, the string quartet tuning up in the barn. He listens with his head on one side, then lifts the helmet and angles it so you can see yourself, small and bright and upside down, and behind you the whole village laid out like a tray of biscuits. 'That's where I've been,' he says. 'Watching the lot of you hurry about.'

You understand then that the view was never the point, the wedding was. You hold out your hand for the helmet. He considers it, then tucks it under your arm and climbs onto your shoulder, feathers scratching your ear. When you reach the lane the bride's car is turning in at the gate, and the rooster stretches his neck and crows through his tin mouthpiece, so loud that every head in Abbotsley turns up at once.