Colour tattoo of a round-headed skeleton figure in a long dark coat, set in a black ornate oval frame with a purple and yellow moon, bats and a swirl hill, on the thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeleton figure in an ornate oval frame on a thigh

Neo-trad · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A tall skeleton figure with a round skull head and a long dark coat stands in the centre of an ornate black oval frame. Behind it, a yellow moon sits against a purple and blue starry sky, with small bats scattered on the right and a swirling hill at the bottom. The figure uses soft grey shading with bold black outlines on the frame, while the background uses smooth colour washes.

Neo-trad Thigh Skeleton Moon Bat Star Hill Swirl Frame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Agnes had never once seen the thing come up the spiral path, only the trail it left in the dew, a bent line of silver curling below the orchard wall. On the night the moon hung fat and yellow over Gallow Hill, she went out with a lantern and her late husband's shears, because the roses had been fed all summer and something was still eating the buds.

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Bats lifted off the yew in a loose handful and scattered across the sky like thrown pepper. Beyond them the purple dark was full of pinpricks, and she thought, not for the first time, that the stars looked as though someone had flicked a wet brush at the night and never bothered to wipe it clean.

The figure was standing in the rose bed when she reached it. It was tall and thin, wrapped in a long coat the colour of wet slate, and its round white skull tipped to one side as if listening. Its long fingers held a pair of snips far better made than hers. "They are sulking," it said, in a voice like a drawer sliding open. "Too much nitrogen. Your husband always laughed at the aphids."

Agnes raised her lantern. The skull grinned at her, wide and patient. She sat down on the bench Arthur had carved with their initials and handed over the shears. By dawn the roses were bare and neat, and the moon had gone pale over the hill. The next spring the buds came in red as ever, and she left the gate on the latch every full moon after that.