Fine line serotonin molecule tattoo on the upper chest, glowing blue under ultraviolet light.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Serotonin molecule tattoo on chest

Fine line · Chest · Colour · Photo

A blue line drawing of the serotonin molecule, with a benzene-like ring fused to a five-sided ring, an ethylamine chain and labelled HO, NH and NH2 groups, sits on the upper chest near the collarbone. The thin, even linework appears to glow under ultraviolet light, and the ink is a single bright blue. The photo is taken close up at an angle, with a warm light source at the left, a thin chain necklace running across the skin and the neck and chin cropped out of frame.

Fine line Chest Molecule Chemical structure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The relief boat was late again, so I spent the night of the storm learning the lamp room by touch. Under the cold white of the bulbs I could see nothing on the iron railing but rust and gull muck, until I found the ultraviolet torch Mr Quick had left in the drawer with the tide tables. Then the rail lit up: a blue ring, a small hooked chain, three letters glowing like a stain of sea light.

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Mr Quick had been a chemist in Falmouth before Trinity House took him on. His widow wrote to me in the spring, asking whether the rail had ever been repainted. She said he used to trace the shape with his finger on the long watches, naming each corner aloud as though it were a street he knew by heart. Hydroxy, he called the first bit. Indole for the ring. I never asked what the rest of it was for, and he never offered.

At four in the morning the wind dropped and I climbed out onto the gallery with the torch. Below, the sea was black and indifferent, and the beam swept over it every twelve seconds. I laid my palm against the glowing outline and felt only cold iron. Then I took a pencil and copied the chain onto the back of the logbook, trying to get the angle of the nitrogen right, and found I could not remember which corner carried the extra hydrogen.

The relief boat came at seven, bucking in the swell. I handed over the keys and the logbook, and I left the torch switched on, lying on the rail where the next keeper would see the blue ring the moment the sun cleared the Stack.