Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Wolf head in pen hatching

Black and grey · Flash

A wolf's head is shown in three-quarter profile, looking to the right. The face is built from dense, short pen hatching that defines the fur, ears and muzzle, with heavier dark areas around the eyes and nose. The image is entirely black ink on white, with no colour and a plain background.

Wolf Animal Head

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift has been broken since Tuesday, so you take the stairs with the shopping bags cutting into your fingers, and on the fourth landing the animal is waiting, or something that wants to be a dog and has given up pretending. Its coat is the colour of wet slate. Its ears stand up like folded paper. It is not looking at you but past you, down the concrete well towards the car park, the way the old men by the bus shelter watch the road when they expect someone late.

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Mrs Okafor from flat 41 says it came in through the bin chute. Mr Pryce says it came down off the hill with the bonfire smoke. Nobody says the word wolf, because nobody on the estate has seen a wolf, and saying it aloud would sound like something from the late news. You set the bags down on the step. It does not move. Only its eyes slide over to you, pale and unhurried, then back to the stairwell, as though you are the one who has kept it waiting.

So you go down with it. It walks a half step ahead and stops at every landing, listening to something under the hum of the strip lights that you cannot hear. On the ground floor the doors have a wedge of grey morning light under them, and the smell of wet tarmac comes through the gaps. The wolf waits with its head turned to the right, the way it has been facing all along, and you understand it is not waiting for you to open the door.

When the door swings wide, the car park is empty except for a single trolley and a gull. The wolf steps out, unhurried, and the wind lifts the fur along its neck into dark, fine lines. By the time the bin men come round, they will have their own version of the morning, and nobody will believe them either.