Neo-traditional style tattoo of a large Victorian house with a spire, framed by bare trees and roots, on the upper arm and shoulder.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Victorian house framed by bare trees on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a large Victorian house with a tall spire, a cross on top, and a low iron fence in front, set within a circular frame of bare, twisting trees and exposed roots. The house and trees are rendered in fine black linework with grey shading, and the sky is softly washed in grey. Small areas of red, on the sky behind the house and on a door, add the only colour to an otherwise monochrome design.

Neo-trad Upper arm House Spire Cross Tree Root Cloud

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The estate agent had called the red door original, and Maud had nodded as though that settled it. By November she had stopped believing him. The paint on the front door came away on her thumb in flakes the colour of cold ribbon, and the paper on the stairs had been hung over something older, a pattern of lilies that someone had tried very hard to paper out of existence.

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The house stood at the end of Cinder Lane, behind an iron fence the council had wanted removed in 1962 and nobody had got round to. Its spire carried a cross that the villagers polished every Easter, though nobody could say who paid for the polish. Mr Dorning, who had lived on the lane for sixty years, told her the trees had been planted to keep the house in, not to shade it. He said this while looking at the roots, not at her.

She went up on the first night of frost with a torch and a tin of white gloss, meaning to cover the door and be done. The sky over the gable had gone the grey of wet slate, and the red seemed to pull the last of the light towards it. She managed one stroke of gloss, then stopped. Behind her the gate she had latched rattled once, the way a gate does when someone has finished leaning on it from the other side.

In the morning the tin was empty and the door was red again, brighter than before, and the fence had a new gap just wide enough for a woman to step through. Mr Dorning brought round a loaf and asked if she would stay for tea. She said yes. She had already started counting the windows.