Black and grey realism tattoo of a wall socket with a plug and cable running down the centre of a person's back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wall socket and plug tattoo on a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A bare back shows a realistic tattoo of a grey wall socket with a white plug inserted, and its cable runs down the spine. Soft shading and highlights give the socket and plug a three-dimensional look, with a fine line for the cable. The palette is greys and white on tanned skin, with the head cropped out of frame and dark trousers and a belt visible at the bottom.

Realism Back Cable Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the socket first, grey and flush against the breeze-block wall of the fuel stop that closed in the spring, its two round eyes looking out across the empty forecourt. Your phone is at four per cent and the man at the last town said the power had been off for days, but a small red light glows in the socket, faint as a cigarette end. You crouch and push your plug in anyway. Something inside clicks, like a tongue against teeth.

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The cable runs away from the wall, pale and dusty, and you follow it because there is nothing else to do out here. It passes a rusted bicycle with no saddle, a row of tyres stacked like sleeping animals, a child's plastic spade, then dips under the sand and comes up again at the foot of a leaning sign for cold drinks. The sign is humming. It is the first real sound you have heard in two hours with the windows down, and it is coming up through the soles of your boots.

Your phone is still at four per cent. You kneel and trace the cable back to the plug and see that the metal prongs have baked the sand around them into a glassy pale ring. The hum rises. Somewhere past the dunes a dog starts barking, then stops, as if someone has put a hand over its mouth.

You pull the plug free. The light in the socket dies, the sign falls silent, and the cable slithers back under the sand like a rope let go. Your phone stays at four per cent. Out past the dunes the dog begins again, and you understand you have only borrowed something that was never yours to take, and that it will be wanting it back.