Realistic black and grey tattoo of a zipper opening on the inner forearm to reveal a hand gripping from beneath the skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Zipper revealing a hand on the forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A zipper runs vertically down the forearm, its pull tab near the wrist, and the skin appears to part along its teeth. A shaded, three-dimensional hand emerges from the opening with its fingers curled. The tattoo is rendered in soft greys and deep blacks with fine highlights, with a thin red line inside the zipper gap adding a small touch of colour.

Realism Forearm Hand Skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margaret, the road over the pass closed on Tuesday, and the Fleece has eleven guests and one holdall nobody will claim, so I am writing this at the back desk beside the boiler, which is the only warm place left in the building.

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The holdall belongs to the gentleman in room six, who arrived on foot with snow on his shoulders and went straight up without a word. Its zip has been shut since Tuesday, I would swear to it. Yet every morning the teeth have parted a little further, the brass pull ticking against the skirting like a clock with a loose spring. Yesterday it had opened as far as the handles. This morning, while I was laying out the marmalade, a hand came out of the gap. It was pale and jointed like a glove full of candles, fingers curled as though they wanted a cup of tea.

I did not scream. I am too old and too sensible for screaming, though I did drop the butter dish. I went to pull the zip closed, and the metal was warm as a poker, and inside the seam I saw a thin red line like a thread of lamplight. The fingers closed around my wrist, not hard, just firmly, the way you would steady a tray. Then they let go, the hand slid back inside, and the teeth ran shut with a sound like a breath drawn in.

The gentleman has not come down. The snow has buried the car park to the sills and the phone line is dead, so there is nobody to ring but you. I have boiled the kettle for two and set a mug beside the holdall. If the teeth open again tonight, I shall pour, and I shall leave the gap exactly as wide as it wants to be.