Black and grey realistic skull tattoo wrapped in swirling smoke on a man's chest, with another tattoo partly visible on the upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Realistic skull with smoke on chest

Realism · Chest · Black and grey · Photo

A large realistic skull is shown in side view, with its jaw open and teeth detailed, surrounded by curling smoke or flame-like shapes. The shading uses smooth gradients, strong dark shadows and bright highlights across the bone and the swirling forms. The tattoo is in black and grey only and fills most of the frame, with part of a second tattoo visible on the left edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Nell, the big furnace at the Cutler's Wheel cracked its lining again on Tuesday, so they've had us on nights all week and I haven't slept properly since. Don't tell Mum. You'll remember how she hated the smoke off the steelworks, how she'd hang the washing in the kitchen rather than let it catch the soot.

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Last night, gone two, I was on the tap with Dennis Coyle when the stack pulled wrong and the smoke came down instead of going up. It rolled off the top of the pit like something alive, grey going black at the edges, and it folded over itself until there was a jaw in it. Honest to God, Nell, a skull with its mouth hung open, bone-white where the glow from below caught it. Dennis crossed himself. I just stood there holding my tongs.

It held for about the time it takes to say a decade of the rosary, then the draught caught it and tore it apart over the yard, and what was left went off over the canal towards the Don. Nobody else saw it. Dennis says I imagined it and I'm not going to argue, because the ingot we poured after had a face in its skin when it cooled, the teeth set as if it found us funny.

I've kept the ingot. It sits on the windowsill, and the lamp from the yard throws its shadows exactly where the smoke was. I'll bring it on Sunday. Tell Mum I'm eating. Your loving brother, Tom.

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