Black and grey engraved-style tattoo of an anglerfish on the upper arm, with a skeleton curled inside its body.

Anglerfish with skeleton on upper arm

Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A deep-sea anglerfish with an open jaw and a glowing lure on its head fills the upper arm, its body hollowed out to show a seated skeleton. The linework is fine and hatched, with stippled shading on the fins and bones, giving an engraved look. The tattoo is entirely black ink and grey tones, framed against pale skin and a blurred street background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the thumbprint you've left on the glass, Tobias, and keep your breath off it. Mrs Greaves comes in Thursdays and counts smudges the way other women count sins. Now look at the lamp on its brow. That little bulb is the bait. It hangs a glimmer over the black water, and whatever comes to look at the light gets looked at back, usually by a jaw the length of your forearm.

Keep reading

The Ada Mary brought him up off the Dogger Bank in the spring of '88, in a net with three cod and a sack of wet rope. The mate wanted him thrown back. The cook wanted him in the stove. Old Hollis, who owned the boat and had a weakness for oddities, paid the crew a shilling each and took the fish home in a barrel of brine. When they scraped away the flesh, they found what you see there, folded up inside the belly like a man waiting for a tram. Buttons still on his waistcoat. A pocket watch rusted to its chain.

You'll want to know whose he was. Hollis swore he'd never had a name, but the mate told me a different tale in the Crown, that a deckhand called Joseph Lunn went over the side in the February gale, and nobody lowered a boat because the sea was running too high. Make of that what you like. I paid four pounds for the lot and I've had a dozen gentlemen offer me ten since.

There, see? When you breathe on the glass, the lamp flickers. Some say it's the fish signalling. I say it's only the damp in the case. But go on, lean closer. Tell me what you see looking back.

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