Black tribal-style dragon tattoo with a curling body and a sphere near the base, running down the side of the torso.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Tribal dragon tattoo on the side of the torso

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A tall, black tribal-style dragon with a curved head, spined body and long flowing lines, ending in a small open circle and a pointed tail. The linework is solid black with no shading, set against pale skin. The design is vertical and sits along the side of the body, with the head near the top and the tail tapering toward the bottom of the frame.

Ribs Dragon Tribal Swirl Circle Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruth had been sweeping the sprung floor of the Marine Ballroom for eleven years before she noticed the dragon. It ran across the painted ceiling in long black strokes, its head bent over the bandstand, its body curling down the pillars one by one, and its tail ended in a small open ring that hung directly above the door. Nobody on the committee could say who had painted it. The caretaker said it had been there since he was a boy.

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On Thursdays the Brightwell Dance Club came up the stairs in good shoes and danced beneath it without once looking up. Ruth looked up. She counted the spines, nine of them, and wondered whether the painter had meant the ring as a moon, a lamp, or a gap where something had been let go. Her husband Alf had courted her under that ceiling in 1947. He had said the dragon was looking after the dancers, and she had thought him soft.

The winter the roof leaked, the committee sent up a man from Hull with a ladder and a tin of black gloss. Ruth stood below with her mop and watched him work. He painted the spines slowly, the way the original had clearly been done, and when he reached the ring he stopped, climbed down, and asked whether she wanted it closed. She said no. "Leave the hole," she said. "It's where the music gets out."

On the last night before the hall shut for good, she took the ladder herself and left the mop bucket by the door. She put one finger through the open circle. The gloss was still tacky. Below, the band tuned up for a final waltz, and the dragon's lines seemed to shift in the lamplight, as if it were lifting its head to listen.