Black traditional-style tattoo of an open mouth with teeth and fangs, outlined in dashes, on the calf, in front of a brick wall.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Toothy open mouth on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black tattoo of a wide open mouth with rows of teeth and pointed fangs sits on the calf, with a small black shape above it. The bold outlines and solid black fill are typical of traditional flash, and a dashed outline frames the mouth. The design is in black ink only, shown against a red brick wall in a close, straight-on photograph.

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift in Calder House never came when you pressed it. It came when it was ready, and in between it ground and clanked somewhere behind the steel doors like a dog working at a bone. Everyone on the eleventh floor had a theory. Mrs Okafor said it wanted pennies. Our Ryan swore a bloke had got stuck in there in 1978 and was still waiting for his floor.

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My theory was the sticker. Someone had put it inside the lift, just above the buttons, a black mouth packed with teeth and two long fangs, edged with a dashed line as if it had been cut out with blunt scissors. Nobody knew who. Every few weeks it peeled off and turned up again in the same crooked spot, and every few weeks the wait got longer. I reckoned it was hungry, and that the lift was feeding it.

On a wet Tuesday I peeled it off with my thumbnail, meaning to bin it. The doors shut behind me and the car dropped, slow, the way it does when it's thinking. Halfway down the cable gave a long low hum, and the sticker went warm against my palm, as if something on the other side of it had just swallowed. The doors opened on the ground floor. Nobody was there. The lobby smelled of wet concrete and something sweet, like pear drops.

I stuck it back above the buttons, pressed eleven, and the doors closed before I'd let go. We went up without a sound. When they opened on my floor the corridor lights were already on, and for the first time since I was nine, the lift had not made me wait.

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