Traditional style tattoo of a black bull head with an orange eye, above a dagger, a candle and a star, on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Bull head with dagger and candle on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A black bull head with horns, a shaded muzzle and a small orange eye is the central motif, with a dagger, a candle and a star above it. The bold outlines and solid black shading with grey detail give a classic flash look, and a small curled line with a bloom-like shape sits at the base. The tattoo is shown in close view on a hairy lower leg against a plain grey floor.

Traditional Calf Bull Dagger Candle Star Horn Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bull came down the corridor at ten past three, which Gerry always said was the hour the old building breathed out. He pushed the linen trolley with his hip and didn't glance at the dark side ward. I'd been on nights eleven years, and I knew what the orange light over bay four meant before anyone told me, the one that stayed lit when the monitor didn't.

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Gerry had come up from the boiler house in 1974 with a pair of horns bolted to his cap and a dagger letter opener he'd taken off a dead consultant's desk. He kept a candle stub in the drawer of the porters' station for power cuts. Nobody ever asked about the star he scratched into the plaster above the fire door. He said it was for finding the way out when the lights failed, and he was usually right about things like that.

The night the boiler gave up, the whole fourth floor went black and the lifts stuck between floors. I struck a match that wouldn't catch, then the second one did. Mrs Pryce in bay four was calling for her husband, who had been dead since spring. I walked to her with the flame cupped in my palm, past the star on the wall and the dagger hanging on its nail.

She settled when she saw the light. 'Gerry used to bring a candle,' she said. I told her he still did, that it was in the drawer, and that I'd keep it burning until the power came back. It came back at twenty to five. I left the stub on the station desk, and the room stayed amber until the day staff arrived.