Pin-up woman with half skull face and red rose
Neo-trad · Mixed · Flash
A stylised illustration of a woman with a dark bouffant hairstyle and a red rose beside one eye. One side of her face is drawn as a pale skull with dark eye sockets, and her hand rests against her cheek. The bold black outlines and flat fills sit alongside red lips, a red rose and purple shading, with the quote set in black capitals across the top and sides.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Dear Ada,
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The Pavilion ballroom has a new girl on the book and the whole of Sunday night was spent talking about her. Vivienne Marr walks in off the seafront with a red rose behind one ear and her hair piled up black as a wet rook, and she never once looks at the men who buy tickets for her. Mr Pell wanted her billed as The Lady Who Waltzes With Death. She said she would dance for him if he kept the handbill plain.
Last Thursday the photographer came round before the band warmed up. Vivienne sat with her left cheek to the lamp and her right side turned to the wall, and she let him shoot her twice. On the print the lit side is all rouge and lashes, and the other is bone white with the eye hollowed out like a chalk pit. Mr Pell called it a masterpiece. Vivienne called it a joke she told the camera so it would not have to tell anyone else.
Then she danced. I have never seen a woman keep so much back and still look so pleased with herself. Every turn showed the rose, and every turn showed the skull a half beat later, like a card being dealt. At the end of the last waltz the rose came loose from her hair and skidded across the floorboards toward my shoes. I did not pick it up. I left it there for the cleaners, and I am writing to ask whether you think I was wrong.
Yours, Nell
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