Black and grey realism tattoo of a pirate skull in a tricorn hat with a smaller grimacing face and pistols, wrapping the shoulder and upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pirate skull and pistols on upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A detailed skull wearing a tricorn hat and bandana dominates the design, with a smaller grimacing face to the left and pistols and gear along the lower edge. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, using black and grey tones to build depth and highlights on bone, fabric and metal. The piece wraps over the shoulder and down the upper arm, with the skull set centrally along the curve of the muscle.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Skull Pirate Bandana Pistol Face Gear

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Harrow Fenn kept the shooting gallery at the far end of the fair, where the lamps guttered and the canvas sagged. Above his counter hung a painted board of a skull in a tricorn hat, a bandana knotted under its jaw and two pistols crossed beneath. Children paid a penny a shot at the tin ducks, and Fenn always told them the skull was the old captain and would not be hit by a village child.

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One October a boy named Piers Kettle came with a sixpence taken from his mother's jar. He said he would strike the captain, or Fenn could keep the coin and owe him a shilling. Fenn only laughed, loaded the old flintlock with dried peas and stepped back to let the boy take aim.

The boy fired. The board split straight across the skull, and from the dark between the tent poles came a low chuckle, like a man who had waited a long time for someone brave enough to ask. Fenn turned the colour of candle wax, emptied the till into the boy's hands and struck the gallery before dawn. The fair moved on without him.

Nobody in Ashby Cross would say what Fenn saw that night, though every grandmother on the green had an opinion about the lamps. Piers kept the flintlock, and when he shook it, the peas still rattled inside.