Before and after comparison of tattoo removal: a dark bat over a moon on a upper body area, and a black phoenix on a forearm, each shown fading to plain skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tattoo removal before and after, bat and phoenix

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The top pair shows a bat with outstretched wings over a pale moon, drawn in soft black shading with feathered edges. The bottom pair shows a black-ink phoenix with spread wings on a forearm, with the 'after' photo showing the same arm with the design no longer visible. The images are shot against plain or indoor backgrounds and contain only black ink and grey tones.

Forearm Bat Moon Phoenix Bird Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bat came back to the cut the week my father decided the cabin needed repainting. It worked the same stretch of water every dusk, skimming the lock gates, and when the moon cleared the poplars it would cross the pale face of it so neatly that Dad said somebody must have drawn it there with a soft pencil and a steady hand.

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We were moving the Marigold down to Braunston for the sale, and the buyer wanted the cabin clean. Dad had a tin of primer, a rag and no patience for sentiment. He painted over the bat first, because that was the part I had asked him to keep. Then he went round the moon with a brush the width of a finger, and said a moon with nothing on it looked like a dinner plate.

I stood on the gunwale with the lantern and watched the feathered edges of the bat go soft under the grey. It came round once more over the water, looked at us the way bats do, as if we were a poor sort of insect, and went up into the poplars. I thought of the moon underneath the paint, still round and still pale, not caring who had covered what.

At the lock next morning a boy asked what we had done to the boat. I told him nothing much, only that we had tidied it for the next owner. But I knew the moon was still there under the primer, the way you know a face in a crowd even when someone has turned it to the wall.