Black and grey realism tattoo of a death's-head hawkmoth with a skull pattern on its thorax, placed on the stomach above the navel.

Death's-head hawkmoth on the stomach

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A large, detailed moth with spread wings sits centrally on the abdomen, just above the navel, with its head and thorax showing a skull-like pattern. The wings and body use fine shading with bright highlights and dark banding to create depth and texture. The image is in black and grey, framed by a dark garment at the top edge and plain skin around the design.

Realism Other Moth Skull Wing Insect

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp at the Vellan pass had burned so long that the moths no longer feared it. Old Teodor, who kept the barrier at the bridge, said the big brown one with the skull on its back had come every autumn since his father's time, and every autumn it sat on the tin roof of the hut and squeaked like a cart wheel wanting grease. The carters crossed themselves when they heard it. The honey men spat on the road.

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One November a wagon came up from the lowland with eleven crates stamped for the monastery, and a driver who would not look at the lamp. Teodor opened the first crate with his knife. Wax, as promised. He opened the second. Wax. The moth came down off the roof and settled on the driver's sleeve, and its thin, certain squeak was so like something he knew that the man began to weep without meaning to. 'My mother used to call me that way,' he said. 'She has been dead a year.'

Teodor pried the last crate. Under a layer of wax lay bundles of letters tied with red string, each one addressed in a careful hand to a village on the far side of the ridge, to people who had stopped answering. Teodor had no way to know whose they were. He only knew the moth had chosen this crate. He lifted the barrier, waved the wagon through, and sat down with his back to the lamp.

By morning the moth had gone down the valley ahead of the wagon, and the driver's cart was empty of everything but the letters' faint smell of smoke.