Black linework tattoo of a flowering cactus growing out of a skull, placed on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cactus growing from a skull on a calf

Botanical · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A black linework tattoo shows a saguaro-style cactus with a flower at the top, rising from the crown of a skull with solid black eye sockets and a row of teeth. The outlines are even and the cactus spines are drawn as small marks along the stems, with no grey shading. The tattoo sits centrally on a lower leg against a tiled floor and a dark shoe at the edge of the frame.

Botanical Calf Cactus Skull Flower Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tessa had come to the reunion in the same cardigan she wore for Year Eleven results, and the function room at the Crown smelled of sausage rolls and floor polish. Dean Pryce kept calling her Tess Biology, as if the nickname had been waiting thirty years for an audience. She let him. Nobody had ever called her anything interesting in Didcot, and it was nice to be remembered for something, even if it was lab coats and Bunsen burners.

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Dean had a battered exercise book in a carrier bag, the sort with a cartoon tortoise on the cover. He opened it at the back, where the pages were soft from being handled in the wrong sort of pockets. There was a drawing there, a saguaro with a flower at its crown, growing out of a skull with two solid black eyes and a row of teeth. Mr Harker had caught them both passing it under the desks and made them stay behind to explain. Dean had said the cactus was the only thing in the desert that outlasted the skull, so it was only fair. Tessa had said it was not fair at all, and then she had laughed so hard that Mr Harker sent them both out.

"You drew the spines," Dean said, tapping the page. "Every single one. Took you a whole Tuesday."

She had forgotten that. She remembered the smell of the rubber and the way the light came through the windows of Room 14 onto the old cactus Mr Harker kept alive on the sill, which had bloomed once a year and nobody had ever once been there to see it. Tessa took the biro from the bag, uncapped it with her teeth, and wrote her name under the flower, in the small space left at the bottom, where the paper had gone yellow and no one had yet thought to fill it in.