Black and grey realism tattoo of rolled dollar bills and banknotes with a skull at the lower edge, on a forearm near the elbow.

Rolled dollar bills and skull on forearm

Realism · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows rolled bundles of banknotes and a flat bill showing the number 100, with partly legible lettering on the notes. A skull appears at the lower edge of the design. The shading is soft and smooth in grey and black, with strong highlights on the rolled edges and deeper shadows where the notes overlap, and the design wraps around the arm.

Realism Forearm Dollar bill Banknote Money Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tobias, The 7.14 is running late again, so I've got twenty minutes on the back of a timetable while Mr Oakes counts the kiosk float for the third time. You'd laugh at what turned up in lost property this morning. A bundle of notes rolled tight as a cannon, held with a perished rubber band, and a flat hundred-dollar bill folded round the outside like a bandage. Nobody has claimed it. Mr Oakes says it's been under the bench since August.

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I took it home to look at properly. The rolls are heavy in the way paper shouldn't be, the edges curled and shining where somebody's thumb must have worn them smooth. Every bill had the same faded face looking up at me, and down near the bottom of the bundle someone had pressed a grinning skull in with a biro, as if whoever kept it had a sense of humour about money. I couldn't decide whether it was a warning or a joke, so I put it back in the box and felt daft for being frightened of a parcel.

Then the 7.14 came in, and a lad in a grey hoodie came running down the platform shouting for his bag. Mr Oakes pointed at the box. Turns out the roll was his grandad's, bought years back and wrapped up for luck, and the lad didn't want the money at all, only the thing itself. He held it against his chest like a ticket home and got on the train without looking back at us.

So that's where the money went: nowhere, and everywhere at once. I've kept the hundred for you, folded flat in my purse. Come home at Christmas and I'll show you the grin. Love, Marnie