Traditional style grim reaper with a red scythe and dotwork shading, tattooed on the calf.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Grim reaper with scythe on a calf

Traditional · Calf · Mixed · Photo

A hooded grim reaper in profile shows a white skull with a red-tinged eye socket and open jaw, set against a dark grey hood. A large red scythe curves around the figure, with its handle drawn with a dark wood-grain pattern. Bold black outlines, flat colour fills and a stippled dotwork shadow behind the figure give the design a classic traditional look, photographed on a lower leg.

Traditional Dotwork Calf Grim reaper Skull Scythe Hood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now don't you lean on that railing, it's older than your mother and it has opinions. The lift at Ashgrove House had been broken since the spring, so when the reaper came calling he took the stairs like everybody else, seventeen flights, with that great red scythe on his shoulder knocking every landing. Mrs Tapscott heard him coming from the fourteenth floor. Everyone on the estate could hear that blade scraping the walls like a bad tenant.

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She had the door open before he reached the top. 'You're late,' she said. He told her he was never late, only punctual for the wrong people. She pointed him at the mat that said Welcome, its letters worn down to nothing, and he wiped his bony boots on it with great care. She thought that was the most civil thing anyone had done for her in a month.

She put the kettle on and he sat on the settee with his hood still up, the scythe leaned against the telly. They talked about the pigeons on the balcony, the council, the man in flat nine who played the same Abba record every Sunday. He eyed the tin of Garibaldi biscuits on the side. 'Those are for visitors,' she said. 'I'm the visitor,' he said. 'Not the sort you invited.' She gave him the tin anyway.

He didn't take her that night. Her name had been moved to a Thursday in October, he said, and she could have the grace of a few more weeks. He rose, shook crumbs from his robe, and went down the stairs, the scythe scraping all the way to the ground floor. Next morning the lift doors opened with a cheerful ding. Scratched into the mirror at the back, low down where a child might reach, was a small clean curve like a crescent moon, and nobody on the estate would admit to it.