Colour realism tattoo of a red rose, a gold heart padlock and a key on a forearm.

Rose, heart padlock and key on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Colour · Photo

A photograph of a large colour tattoo on the outer forearm, showing a shaded red rose with green leaves, a gold heart-shaped padlock with ornate scrollwork, and a key hanging from a fine beaded chain. The rose and padlock are rendered with smooth gradients and highlights to give a three-dimensional effect, and the key is shaded in grey-gold tones. The design fills most of the arm against a plain background.

Realism Forearm Rose Padlock Heart Key Chain Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The padlock had stuck again, so I stood in the sawdust with my wrists cuffed behind me and counted the crowd by their coughing. Forty, perhaps, on a wet Tuesday in Market Harborough. That was thirty fewer than the posters promised and twenty more than we'd managed in the last town. Mr Halloway had sold the big top's centre poles in October. What remained was the wagon, two tired ponies, and me.

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Teddy Vell had given me the key in the summer, strung on a chain of tiny brass beads he'd bought from a stall in Blackpool. 'For when the locks stop listening,' he said, and kissed my knuckles as if he were proposing. The padlock was a heart of tarnished gold, its scrollwork worn like frost on a window, and in four years it had never opened for anyone but me. Teddy had left in September with the trapeze girl and the good drum.

Halfway through the third minute the heart gave a small click and sprang open of its own accord. I hadn't touched the key at all. Somewhere in the rain the rose I'd painted on the wagon door in spring had peeled to the grain, and the old lacquer was flaking off like pastry. The audience clapped as though someone had dropped a bag of coins. I shook the cuffs off, walked past the ring, and went straight to the wagon.

I hung the key from the latch, looped the beaded chain through the hasp, and left the padlock swinging open in the wind. I did not go back for the ponies or the posters, or for Teddy.