Greyscale realism tattoo of a woman's face with red streaks and a red umbrella on the upper arm and shoulder.

Woman's face and red umbrella on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A woman's face in soft greyscale shading is partly covered by loose black linework and a vertical red streak running down the arm. Below, a small red umbrella and a figure on steps are rendered in dark grey and muted colour. The sleeve wraps from the shoulder down the upper arm, with painterly, blurred edges against a plain white top.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Woman Face Umbrella Figure Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Margit had counted the steps from the caravan to the big top every morning for eleven seasons, and this morning there were nineteen, not twenty, because the Hartwell brothers had pried one board up in February for firewood and nobody had replaced it. She stood on the top step with the red umbrella tipped against the drizzle and watched the canvas sag between its poles like a wet sail that had given up.

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Inside, the ring was sawdust gone to mud. The last three bookings had been cancelled by letter, all of them starting with Dear Friends and ending with the same apology. Her costume hung on a hook by the flap, the sequins gone grey at the hem, and beside it the high wire lay coiled like something asleep. Nobody had asked her to climb it since the autumn. She had not asked herself.

Her father had painted the umbrella red the year he bought the act from a man in Lyon. Red, he said, was for being seen from the back row. Now the back row held a terrier and a pensioner with a flask, and the red had faded at the spokes to the colour of stewed tea.

On the last morning the rain stopped early. She went down the steps one at a time, counting them aloud the way she had as a girl, and at the bottom there was nothing left to count but puddles. She shut the umbrella with a snap that the empty tent did not send back.