Black and grey drawing of a skeleton pirate in a tricorn hat with a skull and crossbones, holding a lantern and a dagger in its teeth, with a ship's mast behind.

Skeleton pirate with lantern and dagger

Black and grey · Flash

A skeleton pirate in a tricorn hat marked with a skull and crossbones holds a hanging lantern aloft in one hand and grips a dagger between its teeth. A raised hand, a ship's rigging and a tattered flag sit in the background, and a belt with a buckled pouch runs across the torso. The work uses fine ink linework with grey shading on a plain grey background, with no colour.

Skeleton Pirate Lantern Dagger Skull Crossbones Ship Flag Hand

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp swings on its hook as you drag the last stall shut, and the field goes quiet the way it only does after the generator dies. Mr Penhallow has already gone to his caravan with the cash tin under his arm. You are meant to be asleep. Instead you climb the scaffold of the Corsair ride, where the old captain stands with his lantern held high over a painted sea, a dagger clamped between his bone teeth and his tricorn riding crooked over the crossed-bones badge.

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Nobody has oiled his hinges in years, so when you reach up to straighten his hat, his jaw creaks open a finger's width. The painted flag above him stirs though there is no wind. He is waiting for someone to ask him the way home, you think, and so you do. "Which way, then?" The lantern flares and leans toward the far corner of the field, where the big wheel has stopped with one car hanging at the top.

You walk there with him. His buckle knocks against his ribs at every step, like a bell calling the last tram in. At the wheel the car is full of coins, a whole season of them, and beneath the coins lies a chart inked in brown with an X where the harbour wall once ran. Mr Penhallow never mentioned the ride was built over the old quay.

The captain puts the lantern into your hand and folds your fingers round the iron ring. Then he steps off the scaffold and is gone into the dark, leaving you with the light and the coins and a long walk down to the caravan, where the tin is still under Mr Penhallow's arm and you have some explaining to do in the morning.