Solid black tribal design of a stylised scorpion with curled spiral tail and claws, drawn on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Black tribal scorpion design

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows a bold black tribal design that resembles a stylised scorpion, with a pair of curled claws at the top and a long spiralling tail at the bottom. The linework is solid black with negative white space separating the swirling sections. The design is shown flat on a plain white background with no colour.

Scorpion Tribal Spiral Claw

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The drum of the Lisbon-bound ferry was the only sound on Pier Nine that Tuesday, and I was the only one on the bench who knew what the crate held. Teodora Vance had paid me in cash folded inside a Mass card, which tells you she had a sense of humour and no sense of timing. Forty kilos of mineral samples, the manifest said. Nobody checks a manifest at two in the morning in Hull unless somebody has already paid them not to.

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The man who came for it wore a camel coat and carried a pair of bolt cutters like an umbrella. He looked at the crate, then at me, then at the curled black mark on the back of my left hand, the one I had inked in a cellar off Spring Bank years ago so I would always know which way a hook was pointing. He said nothing about it. He didn't have to. The spiral on my hand and the spiral on the tail of that crate were cut from the same stencil, a thing I had sworn never to tell anyone.

I opened the lid with a claw hammer while he watched. Under the foam there were no minerals, only a brass box stamped with a sting, and inside it a single key on a length of red cord. I pocketed the key, shut the lid, and handed him the empty crate with a smile. Teodora would hear by morning that the ferry had sailed without its cargo, and that I had gone the other way, which is the only kind of job I have ever been any good at.