Black and grey traditional-style tattoo of a coffee mug with banners reading Death and Before Decaf on a leg.

Coffee mug with Death before decaf banners

Traditional · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A black outline tattoo of a coffee mug filled with dark ink, with a banner above reading DEATH and a banner below reading BEFORE DECAF. The linework is bold and even, with simple unshaded areas inside the mug and banners. The photograph is monochrome and taken at a slight angle, with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame against a tiled floor.

Traditional Calf Coffee Banner Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Death came into the Ferry Street café at ten to five, when the shutters were still half down and the milk had only just been unlocked from the fridge. He stooped under the lintel, scythe folded like a brolly, and asked for a decaf.

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Maureen did not look up from the portafilter. She had worked the early shift for thirty-one years. She had buried two husbands, a whippet and a regional manager, and had no patience left for anybody who ordered something that wasn't coffee. "We don't do decaf," she said. "Never have. Sit down, you're letting the draught in."

He sat. The chair complained. Through the window a lad was wheeling the bins past, whistling, and Death watched him with an unhurried sort of tenderness he did not usually allow himself. Maureen put a cup in front of him, black as a drain, a skin of dark crema on top.

"That's not on the list," he said.

"Nothing's on the list, love. Death before decaf, that's the house rule. Drink it while it's hot."

He drank. It was the best thing he had tasted in several centuries and he told her so, with some reluctance. She wiped the counter in long circles and did not ask him to leave. When the first bus sighed to a stop outside, he stood and reached for his wallet, and found that she had already chalked the total on the board with a little smiley face beside it, and under that, in smaller letters, "Same time tomorrow, then." He went out and the bell above the door rang behind him, the way it always did, for nobody in particular.