Traditional flash drawing of a skull and crossbones on a poison bottle, flanked by red flowers and a DRINK ME tag, shown on paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull and crossbones poison bottle flash

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A drawn tattoo design of a grinning skull above crossed bones on a stoppered poison bottle. Two red and black flowers sit either side of the bottle, and a small DRINK ME tag with a dotted trail appears at the top left. Bold black outlines, solid red fills and grey shading sit on a cream background.

Traditional Skull Crossbones Flower Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bottle came through my x-ray lane at twenty past four, wrapped in a school jumper and knocking against the tray like a cheap bell. I lifted it off before the belt could carry it on. Black glass, a stopper gone brown with age, a skull and crossbones stuck to the front, and a paper tag hanging from the neck that said DRINK ME in capitals somebody had gone over twice.

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The man who owned it was a retired pharmacist from Ashford with a tartan trolley bag and a patient, rehearsed manner. It was cordial, he said. His grandmother had made it from elderflowers and redcurrants, and the skull was only there so the grandchildren would leave it alone. I asked him to unscrew the stopper. He smiled and said he'd sooner I didn't. I'd worked this booth for eleven years and knew the look of a man hiding something, but his hands were steady, and when I tilted the bottle under the lamp, the liquid was the colour of a Channel sunset and moved the way water should. I wrote cordial, unverified on the form and waved him through with a warning about sugar.

When the lane went quiet, I found the tag had come loose and slipped under the tray. On its back, in faded pencil, someone had written: Only the small ones are allowed to shrink. I read it twice, then put it in my breast pocket with my pen.

The next coach came in at six. I stamped every passport without looking up, and I didn't once let myself wonder whether the lid on the cordial was tight.