Fine line tattoo on the back of a hand showing a woman's face with red lips, hands holding strings above two black silhouette figures on the fingers, with an eight ball at the wrist.

Woman's face and marionette hands on the back of a hand

Fine line · Hand · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a stylised face with heavy brows, lidded eyes and red lips, with outlined hands above it holding strings that run down to two solid black figures on the fingers, resembling marionettes. The linework is thin and even, and the figures are filled in black. Only the lips are in colour, a bright red, and a small black circle with the number eight sits near the wrist.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mags Doolan had never once raised her voice in the back room of the Cue and Crown, which was why the two brothers from Hull never saw the strings. She sat under the green lamp with her chalk and her red lipstick and let them talk themselves into a bet. Every time one of them reached for his wallet she lifted two fingers, and they both bent at the knee like a pair of coat stands that had been given a shove.

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The brothers, Alan and Terry Sowerby, had come south with a van full of scrap copper and a plan to take the Saturday rack off the locals. Mags had watched them across the bar for an hour, the way she watched weather. She knew the bigger one drank to be brave and the smaller one counted his money twice. Their names went on the chalk board by the door in her looping hand, and under them she wrote the figure they owed, which was always more than they thought.

By midnight they were dancing on the sticky boards between the tables, arms raised, heads tipping, while the regulars clapped in time and nobody mentioned the copper. Mags finished her gin, wiped the lipstick from the rim of the glass with one neat thumb, and racked the black ball in the centre of the triangle. Then she let the strings go slack. The Sowerby brothers sat down on the floor like tired puppets, looked at each other, and started to laugh, and in the morning they were gone, the van, the copper and all.

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