Black and grey realism tattoo of a deer skull with antlers, above it a forest scene with a full moon, a deer and a hunter silhouette, on the upper arm.

Deer skull and forest scene on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo on the upper arm shows a deer skull with antlers in the foreground, its bone detailed with cracks, pits and soft shading. Above it, a circular vignette frames a moonlit forest with bare trees, a small deer and the dark silhouette of a figure holding a long object. The shading is smooth and tonal, with strong contrast between the solid black silhouettes and the pale highlights on the moon and skull.

Realism Upper arm Antler Forest Moon Deer Silhouette Tree

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You had been told the wood past Cold Ash Lane belonged to nobody, which was the village's way of saying it belonged to the Pell family and their debts. Your brother Edwin went in anyway the week before Candlemas, long gun across his back and no dog at his heel, because the price of a stag had gone up at Hexham market and the larder had gone bare.

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He came back at moonrise without the gun. You found him at the gate with one hand on the post and the other holding something pale that he would not set down. It was a skull, the crown still tufted with hair, the antlers spread wide as a hay rake. "It walked out of the birches and stood in the light," he said, "and it looked at me the way Mother used to look at the loaf before she cut it." He would not say more, and he would not go back in, either.

In the morning you went out alone, following his boot prints through the snow to the clearing. The moon had gone thin over the bare oaks. There was no stag, only a single line of hoofprints circling a stump, and the grass where he had knelt was flattened into the shape of a man who had decided not to shoot. You took nothing from it. You left the skull on the gatepost where he had propped it, and it was still there when the thaw came, the eye sockets full of rain.

Nobody in Cold Ash has crossed the lane with a gun since. The deer still comes to the far field at dusk. When you stand at the gate long enough, it lifts its head from the grass and waits for you to be the first to look away.