Black and grey line drawing of a skull with crab claws beneath a sunburst, set in an ornate gem frame with the word Cancer and a short line of text below.

Cancer crab and skull design

Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey ink drawing shows a skull with a crab's body and claws emerging from its lower jaw, topped by radiating sunburst lines. Below it sits an ornate oval gem frame with wavy scroll decoration and small beads, followed by the word CANCER in serif capitals and a line of italic text. Stippling and hatching give the skull, crab and gem their shading against a plain white background.

Skull Crab Zodiac Sunburst Gemstone Ornate frame Scroll Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third step, it's worn through in the middle, same as my knees. Now then, you'll have heard the fishermen going on about the crab off Gullet Point. They say it's cursed. It isn't cursed, it's hungry, which is a different thing and a sight less polite.

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The first I saw of it was the winter the lamp went dark. I was up the tower with a paraffin lantern and a bad temper, and out past the breakwater something rose with a noise like a wet sheet being torn. An octopus, as long as the lifeboat, come in on the flood to rob the pots. Then a shape came scuttling down the rocks, grey and sideways, carrying a skull for a shell. Bone bleached white, rays scratched across the brow like a child's drawing of the sun, the eye holes full of weed. It went for the octopus without a word. One big claw like a blacksmith's fist, and by morning the octopus was gone. Only the beak was left, washed up at the foot of the light like a gift.

Mrs Pellow from the chandlery said the crab had been sent to punish us for the wreck of the Morwenna. I said it was more likely the crab had eaten the Morwenna's cook, and that ended the argument, because she couldn't prove otherwise. What I know is this: every storm since, the crab keeps to the oval pool under the lantern room, where the afternoon sun turns the water into a green stone, and it has never once come up the rocks to bother anyone who kept their boots on.

So when folk ask me where a body belongs, I tell them the crab would have a plainer answer. Hand me that rope. The tide turns at half past four, and I'd like to see what it brings in.