Realism tattoo of a grey skull with red blood dripping from the nose, above a snarling creature with glowing red eyes and fangs, on a forearm.

Skull and red-eyed creature on a forearm

Realism · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

A large skull with empty eye sockets and a dripping nose sits at the top of the design, with a snarling creature with red eyes and bared fangs below it. The shading is smooth and detailed, with heavy black and grey tones giving the bone and skin a three-dimensional look. Bright red accents on the eyes and blood, with small touches of teal, stand out against the greys and the composition runs down the forearm.

Realism Forearm Skull Creature Blood Fangs Teeth Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

I had the niche half open with the bolster chisel when Dafydd told me to stop. The rain had quit and the rooks had gone quiet over the keep, and in forty years on the ruins of Carreg Dhu he had learned that quiet meant something was listening. I told him it was only a bricked-up cupboard, the sort masons sealed when the lord's bailiff wanted his cellar kept dry. Then the mortar gave, and a skull the colour of weak tea rolled out onto my boot.

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It had a swirl scratched into its brow, a spiral like a snail shell, and its eye sockets were stained the dark red of old wine. Dafydd crossed himself with a thumb that shook. Pressed into the back of the niche was a carved stone face with its jaws open wide and fangs like broken pegs, and two eyes someone had painted with a red so bright it looked wet. The paint was fresh. I would swear to that before any magistrate.

We carried the skull down the hill in a feed sack, and that night the lodging house smelled of iron. Dafydd would not sleep under a roof with it. I set it on the chapel altar step where the candles had burned to nothing and went back to my blankets. When I woke, the skull was facing the door, and a thin red line ran from its nose down over the stone, as though it had wept blood through the night.

I buried it under the yew before dawn, sack and all. Dafydd says the mortar was never wet, that the paint was lichen and the stain was rust, and perhaps he is right. But when I close my eyes I still see that carved face, its red eyes open and patient, waiting in the dark behind the bricks for someone foolish enough to pull the wall down.