Black and grey realism style tattoo of a rearing cobra with its hood spread, covering the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Cobra with raised hood on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large cobra with its hood spread wide fills the upper arm, its head rising near the top of the design. The scales and body are rendered in fine black linework with soft grey shading that gives the coils depth and volume. The design is in black and grey only and is photographed close up against a white background.

Realism Upper arm Snake Hood Scale

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ruth,

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I left platform four this morning with the lost property ledger under one arm and found the wicker basket still sitting by the bench where the travelling man had left it on Tuesday. Nobody had claimed it. The porter swore something shifted under the lid, so I lifted it with the broom handle, and up rose a cobra, hood spread wide as a parasol, hissing at the ticket machine as if the fare had personally offended it.

The travelling man was a Mr Adair, who had told the guard he would be back by the five o'clock. Nobody else would go near the basket, so Gwen from the signal box came down with her storm lamp and held it low. The light caught the scales one by one, each edge picked out like a rivet on a tender, and the grey shadows under the hood deepened until the snake looked carved out of the dusk rather than sitting in it.

We sat on the bench together for the better part of an hour, watching it watch us. At twenty to six the platform was empty except for the snake and the two of us, and then Adair came pounding up the stairs with his coat flapping. The cobra lowered its head, slid back into the basket as if it had only been waiting for permission, and that was that.

He pressed a shilling into my hand for my trouble and I kept it, which I am now confessing to you. Keep the lamp lit on your side of the points. I will write again when the next train brings something stranger.

Yours, Maud