Navy line drawing of three skeletons in a row, swimming, cycling and running, as a triathlon-themed design on a cream background.

Skeletons swimming, cycling and running

Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows three skeletons in profile, one swimming with arms outstretched over wave lines, one cycling on an outline bicycle, and one running with a raised hand. The figures are drawn in solid dark navy ink with fine white highlights on the ribs and spines, and the bones are simplified into a clear sequence. The design is a single-colour illustration on a plain cream background.

Skeleton Bicycle Wave

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Get your boots off the stove, Ada, and listen, for I'll not tell it twice. You know the lock at Hobb's Cut, where the water goes green as a bottle? Three of them raced that stretch the summer the river came up over the towpath, and not one of them had a scrap of flesh on their bones.

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First in was Ned Pickle, who swam the flood from the weir with his arms going like oars and his skull bobbing just proud of the brown water. Behind him came Sukey Marr on a bicycle with two wheels as round as hoops and no spokes to speak of, pedalling so hard her knees knocked against her chin. Last off the mark was a long-legged fellow called Harrow, who never once looked back and ran the towpath as if his shadow owed him money.

Round the Anchor Inn they went, and back again. Ned came out of the river first and shook the weed off his ribs like a wet dog. Sukey was level with him on the bridge until her chain came off. Harrow passed the pair of them on the last straight, and at the lock gate he stopped dead, raised one bony hand and waved at my father's barge, as if to say he'd only done it for the company.

Nobody won, Ada. The river kept the bicycle, the towpath kept Harrow's boot prints, and Ned still drips on the lock beam when the water runs high. Now pass me that kettle, and mind the wet on the floor.