He hid her name in others’ tattoos: in mermaids’ scales, dragons’ spines, and the red of bleeding hearts. Now he was too blind to do the work.

He pulled a lever: mechanical fingers splayed opened his eyelids. Tears came just before the needle pricked HELEN into his eye’s soft flesh.

Petra McQueen is a writer and teacher. Her writing has been featured in The Guardian and You magazine, and her stories and poems have been published in the UK and abroad. She lives in the farthest reaches of Essex with her wonderfully supportive family who suffer with grace her moody silences as she composes yet-to-be-written award-winning novels in her head.