Black and grey engraving-style tattoo of a skeleton holding a scythe, with clouds, stars and a DEATH banner, wrapping the forearm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skeleton with scythe and DEATH banner on forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A skeleton holding a scythe stands in the centre of the design, with a skull-like figure below and clouds and stars around it. The fine hatched and cross-hatched linework resembles an old engraving or woodcut, and the image is in black ink and grey tones only. A scroll banner along the bottom edge reads DEATH and wraps around the forearm, with the arm shown against a plain light background.

Forearm Skeleton Scythe Cloud Star Banner Grim reaper

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The cook at Harrow's Reach had a rule about the big iron pot: nobody lifted the lid after the bell, not for gossip, not for a sweetheart, not for the captain himself. So when young Tobias Quill came up the companionway at midnight with his sleeve rolled and his face the colour of tallow, I knew before he spoke that he had lifted it.

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He said there was a man stood inside the steam, tall as the mainmast, grey as an old net, and that he carried a long curved blade over his shoulder like a farmer come to the barley. He said the thing had turned its skull toward him and asked, quite civil, how many more suppers the Mary Ann would be cooking before the sea took her. Tobias had answered, God forgive him, that it was no business of Death's where the ship was bound.

I took the ladle from its hook and went down to see. The pot was cold. Only the broth had skinned over, and in the skin there was a reflection of a figure with a scythe, bent over the rim, grinning at the moon through the scuttle. I did not sleep that night. In the morning I scrubbed the pot twice, then once more for good measure, and I told the crew the lid stays down, and whoever wants to see Death can look at the bell-rope, which is where he had been standing all along.