Photorealistic black, grey and red tattoo of a horror character in a wide-brimmed hat and bladed glove, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic horror character portrait on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A realistic portrait of a horror character in a wide-brimmed hat, with a scarred, grimacing face, smeared red blood and a metal-bladed glove raised beside the face. The work uses fine tonal shading and detailed texture in the skin and hat, with dark grey shadows fading into the surrounding skin. Muted browns and greys dominate, with red accents in the blood and face, and the design is framed by a dark, soft-edged vignette.

Realism Ribs Portrait Hat Blood Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margaret,

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I know you think I've gone soft since Dad's boat went onto the breakers, but I'm writing because the lodger in the top room at the Pilchard Inn has paid three months ahead and never once come down for his breakfast. Mrs Tregear says he's a retired bosun from the Falklands run. I say a bosun doesn't wear a battered brown hat indoors, and he doesn't keep a glove on the mantel with four long blades sticking out of the fingers like a fork left in the sink.

Last Thursday the fog came in thick as wool and the bell buoy was clanging every half minute. I took his tea up on the tray, knocked twice, and heard the wind chime in that room though there was no window open. When I pushed the door he was sitting on the bed with his back to me, rubbing the blades with a rag, slow as a clock. He didn't turn round. He just said, "Tide's on the turn, Ada. Mind the slipway."

I went down the stairs faster than I've moved in years. Nobody in this town had ever told him my name.

This morning the glove was gone from the mantel and there was a single red smear on the sill, gone pink in the sea light. The harbour master says the Tregear lad saw a man in a hat walking out along the breakwater at dawn, lifting one hand to the fishing boats. Nobody waved back. I'm posting this before I lose my nerve, and I'll be keeping the bolt drawn tonight.

Your loving sister, Ada