Black and grey snake tattoo with tribal swirls wrapping over the shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Snake with tribal swirls on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A snake head with an open mouth and a small yellow eye sits at the centre of the design, with its body curling around the upper arm. Black linework and grey shading give the scales texture, and bold tribal-style swooshes frame the snake on the shoulder and upper arm. The tattoo is shown in close view against a plain pale background, with the skin tone and ink contrast making the design clear.

Upper arm Shoulder Snake Scale Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Pauline,

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I didn't get to tell you at the reunion, what with Gary Potts cornering everyone by the crisps, but I've been thinking about the snake all week. You remember it. Mr Hollis found it coiled in the cloakroom boot tray the morning of the Lower Sixth photograph, head up, mouth open, as if it had a speech prepared. Nobody would touch it. You were the one who fetched the old tea towel and the bread bin lid and walked it out to the bins without once taking your eyes off it.

I saw the pale ring on Hollis's hand at the garden centre last month, where the thing had nipped him years back. Twenty-odd years on and he still rubs it when he's thinking. He asked after you. I said you'd gone off to be a vet nurse in Carlisle, which is what you told me, and he looked at me as if he didn't believe a word of it.

The real reason I'm writing is that I found the photograph in Mum's loft. Everyone is blinking except you, squinting into the sun on the back field, and behind you, half out of frame, the caretaker's hosepipe lies on the grass in a long curl, the same sweep of the tail that stuck in my head all those years. The swirls in the ink, I mean. I sat on the loft ladder with it for a good ten minutes, wondering how much of that afternoon I'd made up since.

Come for lunch in March. I'll make the bread you liked, and I'll keep the bin lid out of sight.

Love, Maureen