Black and grey tattoo flash designs printed on a phone case, including a large butterfly, a compass, chevrons, a rose and a microphone.

Tattoo flash sheet printed on a phone case

Black and grey · Flash

A phone case shows a dense black and grey flash sheet of tattoo designs on a white background. The central motif is a large moth or butterfly with detailed wing shading, surrounded by a compass, chevron shapes, a rose or mandala-style flower, leaves, a microphone, a banknote, a coffee cup and small lettering. The linework is sketchy and the composition is packed edge to edge with designs.

Butterfly Moth Compass Chevron Rose Leaves Microphone Banknote Coffee cup Lettering Flash sheet

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The moth had been following Dev since the Tuesday he lost the van keys, and by the third week of February he had stopped trying to shoo it off the mic stand. It was the colour of weak tea, with a pair of eyes painted on its wings that looked faintly unimpressed, and it seemed to prefer the bus shelter on Briggate to anywhere with a view of the river. Dev took this as company. Nobody else stopped.

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Ruth from the chip shop started leaving a flat white on the step for him, which he took as a sign, though the cup was never quite full and she never asked for it back. He kept a brass compass in his coat, a cheap one from Whitby that his dad had bought for a fiver, and when he couldn't decide which song to start with he'd flip the lid and let the needle choose. It always pointed at the bins. He sang the bins a lot that winter, old folk songs mostly, and the bins never complained.

On the last Friday before the thaw a banknote came down out of the rain, folded into a paper arrow, and skidded to rest against his shoe. Someone had scrawled across the back in biro: you'll only fall if you look. He didn't know who'd written it. He looked up anyway, into the drizzle over the Corn Exchange, and saw nothing but the orange glow of the street lamps and a grey smudge of wings that rose, turned, and kept going north.

He tucked the note into the compass lid, picked up his guitar, and sang the first song he had ever learned, the one about the boat that goes nowhere, to nobody in particular. Somewhere behind him Ruth shut the chip shop door. The moth did not come back, but the cup was full the next morning, and that, Dev decided, was a direction of its own.