Sketchbook page of hand-drawn tattoo flash in red and blue pencil, including a spider, umbrella, eye, apple, dagger and chainsaw, with no body placement shown.

Sketchbook page of spider, umbrella and chainsaw flash

Colour · Flash

A sketchbook page held open by a hand shows many small tattoo flash designs drawn in red and blue pencil on white paper. The designs include a spider, an umbrella with rain, an eye, an apple with a worm, a centipede, a dagger, a chainsaw, a noose, a pentagram and a zombie-like head, several marked with the number 13. The loose sketched linework is shown without shading or fill, and the red and blue pencil colours dominate the page.

Spider Umbrella Eye Apple Dagger Pentagram Bat Ufo Bottle Paw Skull Rain Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pruitt had the umbrella standing in her hallway when I arrived, furled and dripping onto the lino, though it hadn't rained on Ashworth Street since Tuesday. 'It does that,' she said, 'every night at a quarter to one.' She pointed up the stairs with the handle of a mop. Someone had scratched thirteen small marks into the landing wallpaper, neat as a schoolmaster's tally, and each one had a tail.

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I brought the big torch and my thick gloves, because you don't argue with a centipede that has opinions. The back bedroom smelt of pear drops and paraffin. On the dressing table sat a teddy bear with a wet pink face and a brown bottle labelled only SWEET in capitals. Mrs Pruitt wouldn't cross the threshold. 'It talks,' she said. 'Not to me. To the wallpaper.' I didn't ask what it said. In my line of work you learn that the things worth knowing are rarely the ones people volunteer.

I spent the night on her spare mattress with the torch off, listening. Around twenty to one the drip began, slow and deliberate, and then the bear laughed in a voice like a cork coming out of a wet bottle. I got up, took the bottle and poured what was left of it down the sink. It did not smell of pear drops. It smelt of rain and cut hair. Spiders came out of the skirting in a neat line and went back in again, one for each mark on the wall, and I counted them until I was sure.

By morning the umbrella was gone from the hall. Mrs Pruitt paid me in cash and a slice of seed cake, and asked if I would come back Thursday. I said I would. On the drive home the wipers started up on their own, though the sky was clear, and I let them run.