Line drawing of a stylised bird in red, black and white, shown as a standalone tattoo design with no body placement visible.

Stylised red and black bird design

Mixed · Flash

A stylised bird faces right in a profile pose, with a large hooked beak, a white eye outlined in black, and a long tapering body. The bold black outlines enclose red and white panels with symmetrical curved shapes, and a red and white chevron runs along the tail. The design sits centred on a plain white background inside a black border.

Bird Beak Wing Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The shed door had been painted by someone who knew what they were doing, which is more than I could say for the rest of plot fourteen. Under three coats of council green there was a bird in red and black, its hooked beak turned toward the gate as if it were waiting for a delivery. I only found it because the paint was lifting at the top corner, and I had gone up with a scraper to stop the wind getting under it.

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Mrs Ada Pryce had worked that plot for thirty-one years and never once told me anything about it. Her nephew came in a van in March and took everything except the shed and a tin of cloves that had gone to rust. I kept the key on a loop of garden twine and told myself I'd sort the door out in the spring. Then the spring came and I didn't sort anything, I just sat on an upturned bucket each morning with my flask and looked at the bird.

It faced east, over the fence and the allotment society's bonfire pile, towards the railway cutting where Ada's husband had once been a signalman. I knew that only because the nephew had mentioned it while loading the van, with the air of a man giving away the last thing he'd been asked to carry. The bird's eye was a closed almond with a black line through it, the look of something dozing on a branch, not something watching for a train.

I stripped the top layer back in September, slowly, the way you would lift a bandage. Underneath, the red was still bright, and the chevrons down the tail were as sharp as the day they were cut in. I left the rest of the green where it was. Now, when the runner beans start to climb, I tell the bird how the leeks are doing and what the council has been up to. It has never once told me I am wrong.