Three side-by-side photos of upper arm tattoos: a black tribal pattern on the left, a red and black biomechanical alien design in the centre, and a grey and black biomechanical skull with a green eye

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Three upper arm tattoos: tribal and biomechanical

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The left panel shows a bold black tribal pattern with flowing solid bands across the upper arm. The centre and right panels show biomechanical designs: the centre has a red and orange outlined alien figure on a black background, and the right has a shaded grey and black skull-like mask with a green eye and a red lens. The images are cropped closely to the upper arm and shoulder with plain backgrounds.

Upper arm Shoulder Tribal pattern Alien Biomechanical Skull Mask Eye Sleeve

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Right, sit yourselves down, the urn's still hot and I'll not start till Brenda stops rattling those cups. You'll remember the boiler house behind Mr Haddow's woodwork room, the one with the iron door that stuck in damp weather. Nobody went in there except the caretaker, Mr Oakes, and nobody ever saw what he kept on the high shelf, wrapped in oilcloth gone the colour of stewed tea.

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It was the autumn we were thirteen. Terry Bell had a dare on him, a bob from every lad in the fourth year, and he came back up the coal chute with soot in his eyebrows and a rubber mask strapped to his face. Black, ribbed like a beetle's back, with a green glass eye that lit when he breathed and a red lens at the mouth that looked like a brake light somebody had sat on. He said the thing hummed. He said it told him the reservoir was cold and he wasn't to go.

He went anyway, of course. We found him in the drying shed at dusk, sitting on an upturned crate with the mask pushed up on his forehead. He wouldn't say a word about the water. Only that the red glass had gone dark, and the green eye had turned slowly to follow Mr Oakes across the yard, the way a dog watches a man with a lead. Terry never wore anything he didn't own again.

Mr Oakes never asked for it back, and nobody ever asked him why. It's still up on that shelf, if the new head has the sense to look. So pour the tea, Brenda, and don't you dare go in there after dark. If you see a little green light blinking behind the iron door, don't go looking for the lens. It's only counting who's left.