Realism black and grey tattoo of a large skull across the chest and stomach, with the word INSOMNIA above it and further tattoos on the neck, upper arm and forearm.

Full torso skull and dark imagery tattoo

Realism · Chest · Mixed · Photo

A bare torso covered almost entirely in tattoos, dominated by a large, detailed skull across the chest and abdomen with deep shadowed eye sockets and teeth. Above it, the word INSOMNIA is written in dripping lettering, with a smaller skull at the neck and a grey skull and a red-streaked creature on the upper chest. The shading is smooth and realistic, with the greys and blacks in the main skull contrasting with touches of red and some coloured areas on the left arm.

Realism Chest Ribs Upper arm Forearm Neck Skull Lettering Eye Snake Dagger Angel Rose Demon Wolf Blood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Hettie, The last up train left at twenty to midnight and the lamps went out along platform two within the hour, but I haven't slept a full night since the Michaelmas fog came down on Carrow Junction. The signal box keeps its own hours now. Mr Pardew says it is nerves, and he sleeps like a dropped sack, so I suppose that settles it.

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The thing I keep turning over is the timetable board. Somebody has chalked a service on it that isn't in the working book: a Thursday goods, 2.40 a.m., route marked only with a small skull in the margin and the word LATE underlined three times. Each morning it has been rubbed out, and each night I find it back again in a hand like barbed wire. The wolf-headed lamp on the far bridge gutters whenever it appears, and a cold draught follows the down line from the north, smelling of wet coal and something coppery.

Last Thursday I stayed in the box with the lever frame and a cup of tea gone stone cold. At 2.38 the bell rang, though nothing was on the line. Something came along the rails very slowly, a grey light the shape of a train with no windows, and it stopped level with my door. I didn't look at it. I looked at the ledger and wrote in it the way Pardew taught me: time, train, clear. Then I wrote INSOMNIA across the top of the page, because I could not think what else to put.

When I looked up the light had gone and the chalk was gone too. Only the ledger was different. Someone had written underneath in my own hand: Driver Ruel, signed for, no sleep until he's home. I do not know who Ruel is, Hettie. Come on Sunday if you can, and bring the good tea. I will sleep when the line is clear, and not before. Your loving brother, Tom.