Close photograph of a small black abstract squiggle tattoo on a finger, shown against a dark, moody background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small black squiggle tattoo on a finger

Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is raised with a small black tattoo on one finger, drawn as a loose, wavy squiggle with a few angular strokes. The ink is solid black with no greys or shading visible, and the linework looks fine and simple. The soft, dark background and low lighting focus attention on the small mark, with the rest of the hand fading into shadow.

Hand

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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

Dear Nell, I've kept the drum turning since Tuesday, and I'm writing this on the back of a spare chart because the kettle has packed in and there's nothing else to do between the hours. The needle on the old seismograph has been drawing the same little wriggle for three nights now, a hook and a dip and a tail that curls back on itself. Mr Abbott says it's only the tram on Coombe Road shaking the floor. He's probably right. He's usually right about trams.

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But the trams stop at eleven, and the wriggle arrives at quarter past two, every night, small enough that you'd miss it if you weren't sat there with a cup going cold. I've marked each one in pencil with the time. Last night I held my finger over the paper and traced it slowly, the way Dad used to trace the coast on the map before a crossing, and I could feel the exact shape of it in my hand before the pen had even moved.

This morning I went to the cabinet to file the sheets and the drum was perfectly still. Nothing moved at all. I stood there with the drawer open, waiting for the squiggle to come back as if it owed me something, and then I laughed out loud in an empty corridor like a fool.

I'm enclosing the last sheet. Circle the quarter-past-two mark if you come up at Christmas. I'd like someone else to have seen it before I decide whether to tell Mr Abbott, and I'd rather it were you than him. Mind the step at the bottom of the stair. Your loving sister, Hettie.