Solid black tribal-style scorpion tattoo on a person's back, shown in a close photograph of bare skin.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black scorpion tattoo on the back

Blackwork · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black scorpion silhouette with a curled tail, segmented body and pincers sits on bare skin. The design uses bold, filled shapes with fine detail in the legs and tail rather than shading, and the ink is dark and even. The plain skin and soft background keep the focus on the tattoo, with a blue clothing edge visible at the lower edge of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The scorpion came in on the linen trolley at ten past three, tucked between two folded blankets as if it had booked a bed. Kieran, the night porter, saw it first and reached for his shoe. Sister Marion Eccles caught his wrist before he could bring it down. "Not on my clean sheets," she said, and fetched a specimen pot from the lab cupboard, sliding a card under it the way she had been taught in another decade.

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The ward was quiet except for the pumps and the soft cough from bed four. Marion held the pot steady while the thing backed into the corner of the trolley, raising its pincers at the plastic. It was black all over, every segment sharp as a stitch, and its tail curled over its back with a hook at the end that looked almost polite. She thought of the registrar earlier, who had asked her three times whether bed twelve could be moved, and how she had said yes three times, because the answer was always yes.

At the fire door she tipped the pot over the step. Under the sodium light the scorpion stood still for a long moment, then walked off towards the bins with the unhurried dignity of a man leaving a meeting he had not enjoyed. Marion wrote on the card with the ward biro: Ward 9, 03:40, not ours. Then she went back in, because bed twelve's call bell was already ringing.

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