Black and grey realism tattoo of a hooded skull with a laurel wreath and a skeletal hand gripping a scythe, on the upper arm.

Grim reaper skull with laurel on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic skull in a hooded cloak, wearing a laurel wreath, with a skeletal hand gripping a scythe handle beneath the jaw. Fine shading builds the bone texture, with soft highlights on the cheekbone and a pale eye set in one socket, while the cloak folds around the edges of the arm. The design is rendered in black and grey only and fills the upper arm, with the hand reaching toward the elbow.

Realism Upper arm Skull Grim reaper Laurel wreath Scythe Skeleton hand Hood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind off the moor gets into the old stones and makes them talk, and you'll want to hear this over it. The keep at Haverlow had nine hundred years on it when the Greyfell general came home from the eastern wars with a laurel on his brow. He rode through the gate behind forty carts of gold, and there was not a single man left alive who had ever bested him.

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The reaper came for him at the gatehouse, as they do. Hood up, scythe resting over one bony shoulder, his cloak hanging from him like wet smoke. The general laughed and offered a bargain: one throw of the dice in the great hall, and if he won, the old man could walk on. The reaper has never refused a game, so he pulled out the trestle opposite and sat. Some say the dice were bone. Some say the general's own mother had carved them. It hardly matters, because the general threw a double six, then another, and the reaper's pale eye went quite still while the candles guttered.

He did not rise. He laid his hand flat on the table, the fingers still curled round the scythe handle, and said, 'Every crown you've worn has been borrowed from someone who came before you.' The general looked down and saw the laurel had gone dry and grey, the leaves crumbling like old paper onto the board. Outside, the gold carts had become a field of ash.

They say the roof has been gone since that night, and when the wind is high you can hear dice rattling in the empty hall. Mind your step on the north stair. The reaper keeps a seat for whoever comes next, and he is never in any hurry.