Small red and black tattoo with a spiky black outline on the side of a finger, shown on a hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Small red and black motif on a finger

Hand · Mixed · Photo

A small tattoo sits on the side of a finger, showing a rounded red centre with black marks inside and a black outline with short spiky projections. The linework is bold and clean, and the red fill is solid against the pale skin. The hand is shown at an angle against a dark, glossy surface, with the tattoo as the clear focal point.

Hand

Find an artist for this

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

The widow at Hollin Cottage kept a walled garden that nobody else could get into, though its gate was never locked. Her hedge along the lane bore a single red seed each autumn, round as a bead and bristling with black points, and the village children were told to leave them be. Ned Parr was nine and believed in very little except his own hands, so when the frost came early he crept through the gap by the water butt and picked three.

Keep reading

He carried them home in his cap. By the time he reached the bridge two had pricked his palm, and the blood ran dark along the lines. His grandmother took one look, bound the hand in a strip of flannel, and told him the seeds went wherever a person hid their lies and sat there until they were found out. Ned laughed at her and buried the third seed under the back step so that nobody would ever tie him to it.

By Candlemas the back step had sent up a stalk no thicker than string, and when it flowered the bloom was red as a robin's breast with black thorns standing out from it. Each time Ned said something untrue, the thorns grew a little longer and pressed against his skin until he had to tell the truth just to be rid of the ache.

He never dug the stalk up. He is an old man now, the lane still has its red seeds in autumn, and he tells any child who asks that the cure for a crooked tongue is a small sharp thing held close, and a plain word said before the thorns find you.