Black and grey traditional grim reaper tattoo with dotted shading, a scythe, falling tears and the words O heaven knows we'll soon be dust, on a limb.

Grim reaper with quote on a limb

Traditional · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A hooded grim reaper with a skull face holds a scythe, with teardrops falling beside the head. The figure is outlined in bold black lines and filled with stippled dotwork shading, with plain white highlights on the skull. Below it, a black serif quote reads O heaven knows we'll soon be dust, and fragments of other tattoos in red, yellow and blue appear at the edges of the frame.

Traditional Dotwork Other Grim reaper Skull Scythe Teardrop Quote Hood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The reaper came up the lane at the back end of January, when the snow had frozen into grey ridges along the hedge and the ewes were lambing in the low field. Ada Penhallow saw him from the kitchen window, hood low, scythe resting on one shoulder like a farmhand carrying a fork. She had her hands in the bread dough and did not stop kneading when he reached the step.

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"You'll be wanting my husband," she said.

He shook his head. The skull under the cowl looked at the loaf, then at the flour on her wrists, and from its eye sockets fell tears that hissed on the flagstones and cooled to small black stones. "Not him. The ewe in the top barn. Her lamb is wrong, and she won't get up."

"Then you'll come in and get warm first," Ada said, and she pulled out a chair with her foot. He ducked under the lintel and sat, the blade laid across his knees like a sleeping dog. Each time she pressed the dough down he let out a breath that rattled like wind in a gate, and each breath brought more tears, which she swept into the coal scuttle without comment. "Heaven knows we'll soon be dust," she told him. "Eat the crust while it's hot. It's the only sense anyone has."

In the barn the ewe lay steaming in the straw, her lamb slack beside her with its hind legs bent under. Ada knelt, rubbed the small ribs hard with a sack, and breathed into the nostrils until the thing sneezed. The reaper stood in the doorway a long while, his tears dropping into the hay, and then he set the scythe against the wall and went out into the snow without a word.

At Candlemas the lane was still empty of footprints, but the lamb had grown fat on the top field, and the loaf left cooling on the sill each night was always gone by morning.