Black ink tattoo of a pair of scissors cut through a horizontal line, with clawed hands on the upper chest and left shoulder, in blackwork and dotwork style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Scissors and clawed hands across the chest

Blackwork · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A black ink tattoo covers the upper chest and shoulders of a bare-chested person, cropped at the chin. A pair of open scissors sits at the centre of the chest, with a thin horizontal line running across it to the sides, ending in ink splatter. Clawed hands with stippled and hatched shading grip the left shoulder and the right side of the chest.

Blackwork Dotwork Chest Shoulder Scissors Hand Claw Line Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cloth had been hung on the drying line for three days before Mrs Ansell agreed to cut it, and by then the gulls had learned to sit on the wire and watch. Nell stood at the table with the big shears in both hands, the blades open like a heron's bill, and waited for the tide bell to stop. Her grandmother had always said you did not cut a thread that the sea had already tied.

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The thread ran from the harbour wall straight out across the water, thin as a hair, and every net mender in Skelder knew it was not rope. Men who tried to haul it came home with their palms scored to the bone and their knuckles hooked like gaffs, grinning as though they had been let in on a joke. Nell's brother had tried it at midsummer. He was still learning to button his shirt with his left hand.

At the turn of the water she went down the steps with the shears. Things came up the wall to meet her, long grey hands with nails like cockle hooks, and they did not reach for her but for the blades, offering the thread across their palms the way a customer lays down coin. She did not look at them. She set the shears on the thread and closed them, and the line parted with a sound like a tooth coming out.

Behind her the sea drew breath and let go, spilling ink-black over the stones. Nell walked home dripping and did not turn round, because the gulls had stopped watching and the hands had gone still above the tide line, holding nothing but the wind. Her brother still cannot button his shirt, but he has stopped asking her to help.