Bold black ink scorpion design with a curled tail and pincers on a white background, shown as a drawn design with no body part visible.

Black ink scorpion design with curled tail

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A bold black line drawing of a scorpion with a long segmented body, raised curling tail ending in a pointed stinger, and two open pincers. The linework is thick and tapering, with solid black fills along the tail segments and claws and no shading. The design is isolated on a plain white background with the scorpion running diagonally across the frame.

Blackwork Scorpion Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last train to Harrowgate had gone twenty minutes earlier, and Dolores Vane stood under the iron canopy of platform four, counting the rain drops that slid off the edge of the roof. The departure board had gone dark. Somewhere behind the ticket hall a tannoy crackled and gave up. She had the parcel under her arm, wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine, and she had been told to wait for a man in a grey coat who would ask her the time.

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He came at quarter past ten, not in a grey coat but in a green waxed jacket soaked black at the shoulders. He didn't ask the time. He sat on the bench beside her and looked at the rails, where the rain had made the steel shine like a blade laid flat. "Your brother always did like a long goodbye," he said. She didn't answer. She had learned from her brother that the quiet ones were the dangerous ones, and that the loud ones only wanted to be heard before they were paid.

He held out his hand for the parcel. She shook her head and unwrapped one corner instead, showing him the tin inside, dented at the lid, with a pair of crooked stamps stuck to it. He leaned close and read them, then laughed without any warmth. Down the line, a signal changed from red to green with a soft clack. The man stood and tipped his hat. "Get the next one north," he said. "Tell them the scorpion's crawled home."

She watched him walk off into the rain, the tail of his jacket swinging like something with a stinger in it. Only when he was gone did she tuck the tin back into its paper and stand, because the lamp at the far end of the platform had flickered on, and the northbound was finally coming.