Large blackwork tattoo of a horned demon silhouette with a red tongue and green-tinged face on the side of the ribs, with a small sword figure and grey shading to the left.

Horned demon silhouette on the side ribs

Blackwork · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A large, dark silhouette of a horned, monstrous figure stands in a striding pose, with ragged brushed edges and solid black ink. Its head has a snarling green face with a bright red tongue, and a small figure holding a blade sits at the left, shaded in soft greys. The composition runs down the side of the torso, with the figure's bulk filling most of the frame.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

By the third week of the autumn tour the Lazarus Brothers' Grand Pavilion had lost its lion, its brass band and two of its three trapeze wires, but the demon still came on every night at nine. You are the one who goes out to meet him, a sword in one hand and a lantern in the other, while the big canvas sags and drips above the sawdust. The painted backdrop was Mercy Vane's work, done in a borrowed barn the summer before the flood, and she gave the devil a green face and a tongue she mixed from the last tin of vermilion in Kent.

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Nobody pays much to watch a man hold off a monster now. The seats are half empty, and the farmers who do come sit with their caps on their knees and their eyes on the exits. Still, you raise the blade each night, and each night the shadow above you lengthens across the cloth until it fills the tent from pole to pole. Your arm has grown tired of being brave in the same place.

On the last night the rain stopped early, and a girl from the village stayed behind when the lamps were lowered. She asked why the devil never moved, and you told her the truth, which was that he had been waiting for someone to finish the job. She laughed and said the green was wrong, that Mercy had never once in her life painted anything to frighten anybody. Then she was gone into the wet grass.

You stood alone in the sawdust, lantern guttering, and lowered the sword. High on the canvas the demon went on striding towards the place where you had been standing, all teeth and ragged black edges, and for the first time you noticed how small the swordsman looked beside him, and how willing he was to be let go.

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