Black and grey photo of a small fine line arrow tattoo on the ribs, beside a striped top.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small arrow tattoo on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A small arrow is tattooed on the side of the torso, pointing left, with a thin shaft and a feathered fletching at the right end. The linework is fine and even, and the tattoo is rendered in solid black ink. The photograph is black and white, with the subject cropped to the torso and a striped top pulled aside at the left edge of the frame.

Fine line Ribs Arrow

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

It is ten past three and the corridor on Ward 9 has gone the colour of weak tea. You are pushing an empty trolley back from the sluice when you notice the arrow taped to the wall at knee height, the one that says RADIOLOGY in capitals and points the way you have just come from. Somebody has got the direction wrong, or the building has been turned round while nobody was looking.

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Halima on the desk says it was the agency lad, who drew it on the back of a rota with a biro that skipped. She says the lift has been out since Tuesday and the porters have been lying about where things are to save their legs. You take the marker from her drawer and stand on a chair, peeling the tape away with your thumbnail. The paper tears across the shaft.

Left alone, you draw a new one, plain and thin, with a feathered tail at one end and a point at the other, the way your grandad drew bows on the back of the allotment seed packets. You make the shaft longer than it needs to be. You angle the head toward the stairs, which are slower and which nobody uses at night, and you tape it up so the corners lie flat.

At half past four a man in a dressing gown comes shuffling past, reading the signs with his lips moving. He stops at your arrow, looks at it for a while, then turns left without a word. You watch him go until the corridor swallows him, and you think that is probably all a sign is for.