Solid black silhouette tattoo of a seated animal with a long curled tail on the forearm near the wrist.

Seated animal silhouette on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black silhouette of a seated animal with a long tail that curls up at the end is tattooed on the forearm close to the wrist. The shape is filled with black ink and has no internal linework or shading, with a thin line beneath it suggesting a ground. The skin is pale and the photo is taken head on against a plain background, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Forearm Silhouette Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marian,

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You will not believe what has been sitting on the wall outside the eleventh floor since Tuesday. Mrs Okafor from flat 14 swears it came up the service lift with the bin bags, though nobody has seen it eat anything but a crust Ravi left on the railing. It sits the way a dog sits when it wants a biscuit, straight-backed, and its tail goes all the way round the bottom of the wall and up again, curled at the tip like a question mark somebody drew in a hurry.

Ravi wants to ring the animal rescue people. Mrs Okafor wants to ring the priest. I have decided it is nobody's business but its own, so I go out at six with the flask and sit on the step to see whether it comes down. It never does. It just watches the car park, black against the grey concrete, not moving for minutes at a time, and then all at once it shifts its weight and the whole shape changes, as if someone has rubbed out a line.

Last night I told it about you. I said you had gone to Lisbon and taken the good scissors, and that the postcards from there always arrive a fortnight late. It tilted its head at the word Lisbon, I swear it did. Then it stood, went along the railing without a sound, and dropped off the end into the dark where the old playground used to be.

This morning there was only a thin mark in the dust where it had sat, a line the length of a body with nothing above it. I have put the kettle on and I am looking at that line now. Write back and tell me whether the scissors are still yours.