Colour tattoo of a skeleton mermaid with flowing red hair and a green scaled tail, in a traditional style, on a lower leg.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeleton mermaid on a lower leg

Traditional · Calf · Colour · Photo

A skeleton mermaid with a yellow flower in her red hair, one hand raised to her head, has a long green scaled tail that curls down towards the ankle. Bold black outlines define the bones, hair and scales, with solid colour fills and some shading on the tail. The design fills the centre of the frame against plain skin, with part of another tattoo, a sugar skull, visible at the top left.

Traditional Calf Mermaid Skeleton Flower Hair Tail Scale Sugar skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The mermaid went up on the booth last Tuesday, and you'll laugh at me, but I could not make her skin the colour I wanted. Mrs Pickering wanted a sweet mermaid for the children, all pink cheeks and kelp, and I gave her one on the first afternoon. Then the tide came up the slipway in the dark and I woke to the smell of brine and sat up thinking of the Lanyon girl who went under off the north pier in March.

So I painted the mermaid again that night, by the lamp, with the green from the tin you sent me from Liverpool. I gave her a skeleton's ribs under the lacing of her bodice, and a yellow flower in her red hair, the sort Edie Lanyon pinned above her ear for the Saturday dances. The scales I did one at a time, outlined thick and black so they would read from the far side of the Front. Her tail curls right down to the boards and stops just short of the sand, as if she is listening for something on the other side.

Mrs Pickering came round at dusk and stood a long while. She said nothing about the bones. She only asked if the curl could be a little less eager, and I said no, it could not, and she paid me in full.

I thought you would want to know the booth is busier than it has ever been. The children stand in front of her and do not scream. I have stopped expecting the sea to forgive us for anything, Tom, but I think she has let us off this once.

Yours, Walter