Black and grey dotwork and linework tattoo of a snarling bear head with bared teeth on a forearm.

Snarling bear head on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A snarling bear head with its mouth open and teeth bared fills most of the frame, shown in profile with a small eye and rounded ear. The head is built from fine parallel hatching and curved contour lines, with stippled dots adding shading and texture on the muzzle and jaw. The image is black and grey on pale skin, and the tattoo is centred with a plain grey background.

Dotwork Blackwork Forearm Bear Animal Snarl Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had been coming down since Tuesday, and by Friday the stalls along Caldew Lane smelled of wet cardboard and frying onions. I sold secondhand radios from a trestle table under a tarpaulin that sagged like a belly. My neighbour, a man called Sol who repaired clocks, kept a stray brown dog under his counter, and the dog had a way of growling at anyone who lifted a hand too quickly.

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On the Friday, a woman came through with a shopping trolley and a bag of coins she wanted changed for a note. She didn't want the note, she wanted a radio, the big cream one with the cracked dial. I told her it wasn't for sale. She stood in the drizzle and said her father had owned one just like it, that he'd kept it on the windowsill to hear the football, and that when he died it had gone to a man who sold it to me. I hadn't known that. I told her so, and she laughed without any sound at all, the way people do when the rain is in their mouths.

I gave her the radio. I didn't want the coins. Sol's dog came out from under the counter, looked at her, and sat down on her shoe, which I took as a sign of something. She wheeled the trolley off up the lane with the radio jammed in the seat, its aerial bent like a broken wing, and the dog went after her as far as the corner. Sol pulled the dog back by the collar. He said nothing. Then the rain eased, and for an hour the whole market steamed.