Black ink flash design of a syringe and a pair of headphones, with the cable forming the word addict in handwritten lettering.

Syringe and headphones joined by an addict cable

Black and grey · Flash

A black line drawing on a white background shows a syringe on the left and over-ear headphones on the right, joined by a cable that forms the handwritten word addict along its path. The linework is bold with solid black fills, dotted shading on the headphone cup and hatched texture on the ear pad. The composition is centred and vertical, with the syringe and headphones balanced at the top and the lettering running beneath them.

Cable Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Our Ray said the headphones had come out of a dead man's loft in Hollin, a man who'd worked the coal face until his chest gave out and then listened to the wireless until it gave out too. They were heavy, black and cracked at one ear, with a cable as long as a washing line. I was fifteen that winter and would have worn a bin bag over my head if it played music.

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I spent most evenings in Ray's back room above the chip shop, the cans clamped over my ears while he soldered valves and swore at the damp. Through them I could hear the crackle of the pit siren on the other side of the valley, the tick of the chip fat cooling, and once, very faintly, a choir from a chapel nobody used any more. Ray would look up from his bench and tell me I was going the way of the old boy, that I'd be a proper case by Easter. I didn't care. I wanted the next song, and the one after that.

In February my dad came off nights with his lamp still clipped to his helmet and found me asleep in the chair with the cans on. He didn't wake me. He lifted them off gently, turned them over in his big cracked hands, and held one cup to his own ear for a long time. Then he put them back on my head, tugged the cable straight and went down the stairs without a word.

Ray found the cable looped round the hook by the door the next morning, wound neat as a rope on a boat. He didn't say anything about it either. He just switched the kettle on and nodded at the cans, as if somebody had finally paid the debt.