Black and white skull design with purple and green accents, crown, spade and star motifs, and red teeth outlines, drawn on a black background.

Joker skull with playing card motifs

Mixed · Flash

A stylised skull-like face in profile, wearing a crown and filled with ornate patterns of spades, clubs, diamonds and stars. The linework is dense and doodled, with dotwork, scrollwork and hatching in black ink, outlined in white and accented with purple and green. The figure sits centred on a plain black background, with the words HAHA written in the design.

Skull Crown Spade Club Diamond Star Playing card Joker

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been falling since noon, and by the time the coach wheels gave up in the lane, the Crown and Anchor was the only light for three miles. You take the chair nearest the fire because it is the only one left, and the landlady deals you in before you have decided whether to play. Four men already sit there with their coats still on. The fifth wears a paper crown folded from the back of a menu, and he has painted his mouth wide with something that might be cochineal.

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He calls the game Mercy. Nobody knows the rules, so he teaches them as the candles burn down, every hand a new one. Spades for the dead, clubs for the sowing, diamonds for the cold coin of the bank, and a star he taps on the table each time someone lies, which is often. Outside, the wind keeps knocking at the shutters like a man who has lost his coat. Every time you look up he is grinning, and the grin is never quite the one he wore a moment before.

The landlady pours and says nothing. The men stop coughing. By the fourth hour you have lost your boots, your watch, and a sum you cannot name, and you are laughing too, though you cannot remember starting. The fifth man lays down a single card face up: the queen of spades, with a star where her eye should be.

When you finally stand, the door opens onto a white wall of nothing. You turn back to the table. The men are gone, the candles are out, and the paper crown lies on the slate beside a chalk line of HAHA, while the snow drifts in through the open door and settles on the cards.