Traditional style tattoo of two snarling wolves with orange-red eyes and black outlines, covering the back of a hand against a dark background.

Two snarling wolves on the back of a hand

Traditional · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows two wolf heads overlapping, with bared teeth, a wet black nose and glowing orange-red eyes. Bold black outlines define the fur, which is shaded in grey and cream, with a dark mass behind the upper wolf. Orange and red accents on the eyes and muzzle stand out against the mostly grey and black palette, and the design fills the back of the hand against a plain black backdrop.

Traditional Hand Wolf Snarl Animal

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Ivy Penhale bought the wolves at a clearance sale in Lowestoft, two carved heads off a fairground gallopers, their paint crazed grey under decades of varnish, the glass eyes still stained orange where the bulbs had cooked them. Nobody else bid on them, so she had them hung above the staircase of Harbour View, where the lodgers could admire them on their way up to bed.

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Her only long-stay lodger, Amos Dray, a net mender with a bad knee, took against them from the start. Every evening he paused on the third stair and swore the upper wolf had moved its jaw a fraction. Ivy laughed at him. Then the October gales came in off the North Sea and the house began to groan like a hull, and spray found its way through the cracked fanlight and beaded on the carved muzzles until they looked freshly bitten.

One night Amos came down with his lamp and found the heads had swapped places. The lower wolf now sat across the upper one, teeth bared down the stairwell as if it were guarding the front door. Ivy said the damp had warped the wood and went back to her ledger. Amos didn't argue. He pulled on his coat and walked down to the harbour, where the lifeboat crew were already hauling the boat over the shingle into the black water.

He was on the slipway when the boat came back at first light, all four men aboard and the gulls screaming over them. When Ivy went up with her duster she stopped on the landing. The wolves had turned to face each other across the banister, jaws still open, orange eyes fixed on one another as though they had finally settled an argument.