Black and grey ink drawing of a Weeping Angel statue with wings spread and hands over its face, with DON'T BLINK lettering below, shown as a tattoo design.

Weeping Angel with Don't Blink lettering

Black and grey · Flash

A winged stone angel with its hands raised over its face and a blindfold-like band across its eyes stands at the centre of the design, with its wings spread wide. The figure is drawn with fine hatched linework and soft grey shading, and the lettering DON'T BLINK sits beneath it above dark ink splatters and washes. The image is entirely black and grey on a pale background, with the composition tall and symmetrical.

Angel Wing Statue Text Ink splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain has been coming sideways through Calder Row market since six, and the stone figure at the end of the row has been wet for longer than you have. You lay out the bric-a-brac on the trestle: a brass carriage clock with no hands, a shoebox of Margate postcards, a porcelain doll missing one eye. Mrs Okonedo at the fishmonger's calls across that the angel has stood there since her mother's day, and that nobody has ever bought it. Nobody buys anything from you today either.

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Your gran's rule was simple. Never look directly at the angels, and never blink when one is watching. She said it the way other people said grace. You thought it was superstition until the afternoon the clock on your stall stopped, and the postcards turned face down one by one, as if an invisible hand were shuffling them. The statue had its hands raised over its eyes, but the gap between its fingers looked wider than it had been an hour ago.

You count the seconds with your eyes open, stinging, rain running into them. Behind the crates a van door bangs. Water pools in the gutter and spreads over the cobbles like spilt tea, and the footprints on the wet stone stop just short of your boots. When you finally blink, the angel is one step nearer, and the rain has stopped falling on the place where it stands.

Mrs Okonedo shouts your name across the market. You don't turn around. You keep your eyes open, the way gran taught you, while the stone grows a little closer and the postcards on the trestle turn over, one at a time, to show you the same view: a bus shelter in the rain, and a girl at the end of it who has forgotten how to blink.