Close-up of a grey and red biomechanical skull tattoo with realistic shading across the upper arm and shoulder.

Biomechanical skull on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

A large skull with exposed teeth and bony, mechanical-looking plates runs across the upper arm and shoulder, with a second tattooed figure partly visible at the left edge. The linework is soft and the shading is detailed, with smooth greys giving the skull depth and highlights. Red ink fills the eye socket, cheek and jaw areas, and the background is blurred.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Skull Biomechanical Teeth Bone Tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the skull in March, when the frost has finally let go of the allotment and the soil turns over in dark, greasy ribbons. Your grandfather's spade hits something that rings instead of thuds. It is not a stone. It is pale grey and plated like a lobster shell, with bone ribs fanning out from the eye sockets and a row of teeth that have been fitted rather than grown, each one set in a small brass collar. Someone has painted the hollows red, and the red is still bright under the mud.

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You take it to the shed and wash it under the outdoor tap. The water runs pink. Behind the cold frames the runner beans have been climbing their wire trellis for three weeks already, though it is only March, and every tendril has turned toward the skull's jaw as if it were a sundial. You lift the lower plate and a hinge clicks. Inside, a tiny gear furred with rust is still turning on its own.

Mrs Okafor, who has kept plot nine since before the war, leans over the fence and tells you not to plant anything near it. "The last man who dug there wanted his marrows to sing," she says, and goes back to her potatoes without looking up.

That evening you bury it again, deeper than the spade needs, under the compost heap where the worms are thickest. In the morning the beans have grown a full yard. Their flowers are red, the exact red of the paint, and when you bend to pick one, the jaw sinks a fraction into the earth, as if to say thank you, or to ask for more.