Black and grey realism tattoo of a snarling leopard on a man's upper arm, with his hand raised to his face beside it.

Snarling leopard on an upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded black and grey tattoo of a snarling leopard with bared teeth and narrowed eyes covers the upper arm, with its front paws and spotted body rendered beneath the head. The shading is soft and detailed, with fine rosettes and fur texture across the coat. The man is shirtless against a dark background, and his hand rests near his face, so the tattoo is the clear focus of the frame.

Realism Upper arm Leopard Big cat Animal Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The leopard came down the mountain pass the third week of the thaw, and nobody in Harrowgate Inn believed Edwin Crane when he said it had looked at him. We had nine guests snowed in that night and a fire that wouldn't draw, and Edwin, who had been a carter for forty years and never told a lie he could not carry on his back, stood by the hearth with frost still melting out of his moustache.

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"It sat on the wall of the high field," he said. "Quite still. Its eyes were narrow, the way a cat's go when it's deciding whether you're worth the trouble. Then it showed me its teeth and went off over the ridge like it had only been looking for the road."

Mrs Pell laughed and passed him a bowl of broth. Her husband had bought a cough tincture from a travelling pedlar that autumn and claimed it made him see things, so nobody asked her what she thought. I kept my eyes on the flames. In the attic, in an old tin trunk, there was a drawing my grandmother had made of a spotted cat with a torn ear, and the name written beneath it in her small upright hand was Sorrel.

By morning the snow had stopped and the field was smooth as paper. Edwin was gone. His boots sat by the door, and in the snow beneath the far wall ran a line of prints, long and deliberate, each one pressed deep as a man carrying something heavy. They led up the ridge and did not come back down.

I have kept that trunk closed since. Some nights I hear a low sound beneath the eaves, patient as a clock, and I think of Edwin's face when he came in, the way he had looked not frightened but chosen.