Close-up of three small black fine line stick figure tattoos on a stomach beside the navel, above a grey waistband.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three stick figure tattoos on the stomach

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

Three simple stick figures are drawn in thin black linework on the lower abdomen, two to the left of the navel and one to the right, each in a different pose. The lines are uniform and unshaded, with the figures appearing to climb or reach. The photograph is a close, warmly lit crop of the torso, with a grey waistband and dark trousers at the bottom of the frame.

Fine line Other Stick figure Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has been falling on the Hollin Fell inn since Tuesday, and by Thursday the landlady has stopped pretending the road will open. You are the only guest left in the back bar, nursing a cup of tea gone cold, when you notice the marks on the sill of the north window. Three small figures are scratched into the old oak with a penknife, each bent into a different effort.

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"Those are the Pell boys' doing," says Maud, wiping down the bar without looking up. "Their mother locked them in the attic loft through a bad winter, the year the drifts came over the eaves. They used to climb the chimney breast to see if the wind had dropped."

You go up after supper with a candle. The loft smells of wet wool and mice. Under the eave someone has drawn a ladder, then a rope, then a long line of figures, each stepping out a little further than the last. The lowest is reaching for the trapdoor. The highest is reaching for nothing at all, arms wide, as if the next rafter might catch him.

In the morning the snow stops so suddenly that the silence wakes you. Maud is already out in the yard with a shovel, and a boy you have never seen is sitting on the gatepost, swinging his boots. He lifts one hand toward the sky, and the road lies clear all the way down to the valley. When you look back at the sill, the three figures have gone, and the wood is only wood.