Small black fine line tattoo of a house with a bunch of round shapes above it, on the outer ankle.

Small house and balloon cluster on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a small house with a pitched roof and two windows, with a cluster of round shapes above it, tied to it by a thin line. The linework is simple and even, in solid black ink with no shading. The design is small and sits alone against plain pale skin, with a dark background at the top right of the frame.

Fine line Ankle House Balloon Line drawing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Ferndale Row believed it was our house until Mrs Pryce from number nine ran out in her slippers shouting that our chimney was leaving. By the time I got my boots on, the whole street stood in the road with their necks cricked back. Our two-up two-down was rising off its footings, tied by one thin string to a bunch of round balloons, each one the size of a cabbage.

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Grandad had worked the Ferndale seam for forty-one years and never once looked up. He said the earth was where things stayed. Now he stood with his cap in both hands while the front step slid free of its mortar with a sound like a cough. Mr Hopkins tried to hook the string with the long pole from his allotment, and it bounced off the balloons as if they were made of nothing at all.

Gran had gone up to the attic an hour before for the wedding photographs, so we were sure she was still inside. We watched the roof clear the telegraph wire and drift over the slag heap, the front door swinging on its hinges as if it were waving. Then the string went taut, the balloons tugged, and the house turned slowly towards the west, where none of us had ever seen the sea from. Gran leaned out of the bedroom window and looked down at us, and she was laughing.

Grandad put his cap back on. "Well," he said, "the seam's finished, and she's off to see the water." We slept in Mrs Pryce's front room that night, and I still keep the brick from the step on my windowsill, because it weighs exactly what a house weighs when it has decided to leave.