Black and white flash design of Medusa wearing a paisley bandana over her lower face, with snakes writhing around her head inside a Greek key border.

Medusa with bandana in a Greek key circle

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black and white drawing of Medusa's head, with her snake hair coiled around her and a black paisley bandana covering her lower face so only her eyes show. The snakes and hair are drawn with clean, bold outlines and solid black fills, and the design sits inside a circular Greek key border. The image is entirely monochrome on a plain white background.

Blackwork Geometric Snake Bandana Paisley Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Shut your mouth and keep your eyes on the bus stop, the pair of you, because I'm not telling this twice. Gerry's bakery was shut by then, the Greek key tiles going grey under the shutter, and the snakes were already stirring on the wall above the launderette, the way they did once the council lamps started to flicker.

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Costas Papadakis painted that circle the summer his mum's shop went under. He drew the border first, the line that turns back on itself and never ends, and then he gave the Gorgon her hair, coil after coil of it, every strand a snake with its own cold little eye. He couldn't bear to paint a face he trusted, so he tied a black paisley square over the lower half, the way the lads on the estate wore them, and left the eyes to do the talking.

The trouble came when the Hendricks boys decided the wall was theirs. They came with a tin of white gloss and a bucket of bleach, and Dean, the big one, climbed the ladder first. Halfway up he stopped. The eyes under that bandana had moved to follow him, and every snake on the wall lifted its head at once, slow as a crane. Dean dropped the tin and didn't stop running until Crawley.

Next morning the gloss was still wet on the pavement, and the wall was clean. Not a drip of white on it. But there was a new row of tiny paisley around the border, all the way round, and you could still hear the hiss if you stood close. So when the lamp goes out tonight, don't look up. Keep your bread in your hand and walk on.