Traditional style tattoo of a grey skeleton hand pointing with one finger and holding a red banner that reads BANG, on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeleton hand pointing with a BANG banner

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A skeleton hand points with its index finger and holds a red banner with the word BANG across it, outlined in bold black linework. The bones are shaded in grey and black, with red used for the banner and a soft red wash behind the wrist. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with a white towel visible at the edges and a dark shape partly visible near the bottom.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit still, you lot, and mind the cable, because the hand on Gantry Nine has never once in two hundred years been polite about where it points. It was bleached white as a gull's wishbone when the first haulers bolted it to the rail, and it has a grin on it that no amount of polishing ever shifted. Its finger is always aimed at whoever is standing nearest the loading bay, and from its knuckles hangs a scrap of red cloth that only ever says the one word. BANG. The old tinker who painted it had run out of everything else in the pot, so BANG is all we've got.

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Back when the ice barges were still crawling in from the Kuiper drift, two crews fell out over a dock berth. Mirrie Sand swore her slow tug could beat Harlan Quee's heavier rig to the far lock, and the whole ring gathered on the gantry to watch them argue about it. Mirrie stood under the hand and said, cocky as you like, that she'd race anybody who dared. The finger swung round, the red cloth snapped out stiff with frost, and from somewhere inside the bones came a crack like a starter pistol off the hull. Every engine on the ring kicked over at once. Nobody won. The tug and the rig hit the lock together, locked their clamps on the same beat, and both crews were so puffed and astonished that they sat down on the ice and shared a flask out of sheer embarrassment.

That's the lesson, if you want one. Be careful who you challenge, because the hand listens. If you go up to Gantry Nine tonight, you'll find it still pointing, red cloth rattling in the vacuum, waiting for some daft soul to shout go. Don't. Go to bed.

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