Small tattoo of a red lip print with a black skull and crossbones over it, shown in close-up on skin.

Red lips kiss with skull and crossbones

Mixed · Photo

A small tattoo shows a red lip print, with a visible lip line and a lighter highlight in the centre. A black skull and crossbones sits over the right side of the lips. The red uses solid fill with soft shading, and the black areas are dense and even against the warm skin tone, with the design centred in a tight close-up.

Lip Skull Crossbones

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The envelope came down to the desk at a quarter past two, sealed with a kiss the colour of a post box, and I knew before I tore it open that somebody in room 411 had decided to stop being polite.

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Mrs Vane had been a fixture on the fourth floor since the spring, a widow who paid in crisp notes and wore her lipstick like armour. Her husband had sold ships' chandlery on the docks until the docks went quiet. Night after night she sent her notes down with that same mark on the flap, and night after night I laughed and slipped them under the ledger. Tonight the note was short. Beneath the lip print she had drawn a skull with its crossed bones, neat as a dressmaker's pattern, and under that, in her tight hand: Tell Mr Okafor the ferry leaves at four, and I am not on it.

I took the stairs two at a time, past the brass lift that had been broken since Christmas, and found the door of 411 ajar. The room smelled of violets and cold tea. She was sitting on the windowsill with her shoes off and a coat folded over her knees, the harbour lights smearing the glass behind her. She didn't look surprised to see me. She looked like a woman who had finished a long argument with herself and lost on purpose.

"You'll tell him I kissed the letter," she said. "He'll know what it means." I asked her what it meant. She picked up the lipstick from the sill, uncapped it, and pressed one more print onto the back of my hand, so lightly it barely tickled. "It means the kiss is the warning, love. It always was. Go on, tell him." I went down the stairs with the red mark cooling on my skin, and by the time I reached the desk the ferry horn was already sounding past the breakwater.