Two hands with dark nails rest over forearms covered in small black fine line doodle tattoos of dice, moons, arrows and the word ghoul.

Small doodle tattoos across both forearms

Fine line · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two hands with dark almond nails are crossed over forearms covered in small, separate doodle-style tattoos. The motifs include a dice, an eye, a sun, a lightning bolt, arrows, a crescent moon, a dagger, an axe, fish bones, a gem and the word GHOUL. The linework is thin and uniform in black ink, with no shading, and the designs are scattered loosely across the skin.

Fine line Forearm Dice Eye Sun Lightning bolt Arrow Crescent moon Dagger Axe Gem Mushroom Text Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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The lift in Carbery House has been out since Tuesday, so I've taken the stairs with the shopping and a grudge. On the ninth landing I found young Kieran from flat 42 sitting on the concrete with a biro, drawing tiny things on the back of his hand. He said they were for the Thursday game in the community room. A dice, an eye, a sun with half its rays rubbed off, a dagger with a fish skeleton beside it. I told him fish bones were not a weapon, love, and he said they were the sort of thing that gets you through a bad level.

Then the power went off across the whole block and I forgot all about it until Thursday. Twelve candles on the trestle table, and Kieran's crowd rolling dice by torchlight. They had a map drawn on the back of a wallpaper roll, with a lightning bolt cutting through the middle and a mushroom ring by the stairwell door. In the corner, in capitals, someone had written GHOUL and underlined it twice. Kieran said that was the name of the big bad, and nobody argued.

After the lights came back I asked him why he kept drawing the same little things over and over on his arms. He shrugged and said he never sleeps well without a new one to look at. He's moving to his nan's in Leeds in March, so I think the drawings are his way of packing.

I've been thinking about those sketches since. Every one of them a small door you could step through if you had a torch and nerve enough. Bring the good candles when you're back on the twelfth floor, and I'll put the kettle on.

Love, Pat