Colour tattoo of the Superman shield on a chest, shown as if the skin is torn open to reveal it, with a halftone dot texture.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Superman shield torn through chest skin

Chest · Colour · Photo

A red, yellow and blue Superman S-shield sits on the centre of the chest, appearing to burst through torn skin with ragged edges and blue layers showing at the tears. The shield uses a halftone dot texture and soft shading to give it a raised, printed look. Colour ink dominates the image, and the crop shows only the chest against a plain background.

Chest Superman Superhero Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had been on the children's ward since ten, and by half two the corridor lights had dimmed to the amber that made everything look like an old photograph. Kieran, eight, had been awake since the nurses changed shift, sitting up with his duvet bunched at his knees and a biro clutched in his fist.

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"It's not a drawing," he said when she came to check his line. "It's coming out. Look."

He lifted his pyjama top and there was nothing to see but the plaster from the cannula. He pressed his palm flat over his heart and frowned, as if the shield was being stubborn about it. Ruth had heard stranger things from grown men at three in the morning, so she only nodded, checked his drip, and asked whether he'd eaten his jelly.

Later, at the nurses' station, she found his drawing folded under the sharps bin lid: a red and yellow shield tearing through a sheet of paper he had coloured with every pen in the box, the edges ragged and blue showing beneath. Along the bottom, in capitals pressed so hard the biro had gone through, he had written IT IS COMING OUT.

Ruth sat with it until the kettle clicked off. She folded the drawing into her badge pocket and went back down the corridor, checking each door as she passed, and when the sun came up over the car park she was still listening for his bell.