Black and grey realism calf sleeve on a lower leg, showing a woman's face with banknotes, a grim reaper and a skull with a top hat, with script lettering.

Realism calf sleeve with portrait, reaper and skull

Realism · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A collage of five photographs of a black and grey calf sleeve. The central panel shows a woman's face partly covered by a fan of banknotes, with a hooded grim reaper and a skull in a top hat in the other panels, and a close-up of script lettering reading "the Root of" with a further banknote detail. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong contrast and soft grey gradients behind the figures. The images are shot against a carpeted floor and black socks.

Realism Lettering Other Woman Banknote Money Grim reaper Skull Top hat Script Lettering Hand Portrait

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The notes came up from the pay office in a brown envelope the week after the fire at Hollin Drift, and Ada Teague counted them twice on the scrubbed table before she trusted the sum: eleven pound for Sam, who had gone down on the Monday shift and not come back up. The clerk who brought them had clean cuffs and a voice like wet paper. The company was grieved, he said, and would say nothing of the gas. Ada was to say nothing either.

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She said nothing. She fanned the notes out the way the men fanned cards at the Institute, then held them up over her mouth and breathed in the ink and coal dust. At chapel Mr Pryce preached on the love of money being the root of all evil, and the widows in the front pews nodded as though it were news to them. Ada did not nod. She walked home past the pit head with the envelope inside her coat.

The knock came after dark. On the step stood a tall figure in a black cloak, its hood up and one hand resting on the latch as if it had every right to the house. "I am owed a collier," it said. "I have come for the one who took the money." Ada held out the envelope. The figure counted the notes with one bony finger, click, click, click, and then it turned and went up the hill without another word.

Next morning the top hat was sitting on the railings at the pit head, empty, and Mr Lusk's cheque book was lying open in the wet beside it. The notes had blown across the slag heap like a flock of starlings, and nobody in Hollin would pick them up.