Two red fish tattoo on the ankle, drawn in fine dark outlines with red shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Two red fish on an ankle

Fine line · Ankle · Colour · Photo

Two slender red fish swim in opposite directions across the skin, each with long, trailing fins and dark outlines. The linework is delicate, and the red ink is shaded to give the bodies a soft gradient. The plain skin and pale floor behind the leg leave the tattoo as the clear focus of the frame.

Fine line Ankle Fish

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Calder House has been out since Tuesday, so you take the stairs with the plastic bowl held level against your chest, the water slopping at the rim every time you turn a corner. Mrs Adeyemi's two fish ride in it, slender and red, their fins trailing behind them like wet silk. She made you promise to keep them away from the radiator on the sixth floor, where the stairwell bulb flickers and the paint has bubbled like old toffee.

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Her flat smells of Vicks and burnt sugar. You set the bowl on the windowsill where the light from the car park comes through amber, and you watch them turn in the water, one heading towards the kettle, one towards the door, as if neither has agreed to the arrangement. The hospital rang at seven to say she is sleeping and the surgeons want another day. You say thank you to a voice you cannot see and hang up before it can ask who you are.

By the third evening you know their habits. They circle the bowl at dusk, and they nose the glass whenever you hum the song she hums while she cooks. You have never kept anything alive longer than a week, and still you find yourself checking the water twice before bed. Nothing about them is a puzzle, except that in three days they have never once passed each other.

On Saturday the lift is working again. Mrs Adeyemi is waiting on the landing with her stick, her coat buttoned wrong, and when she sees the bowl she laughs, a dry sound. 'They always did that,' she says. 'Opposite ways from the day I bought them. My husband said they were arguing. I told him they were only going home.' You carry the bowl the last few steps to her door and feel the water settle against your wrists, and the two of them turn, at the very last moment, to face the same way.