Realism tattoo of a shaded skull with a red rose above it and red and black splatter effects, on a person's upper back.

Skull and red rose on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A realistic human skull in black and grey shading sits across the upper back, with a detailed red rose above and to the right of it. Soft black and grey shading gives the skull depth, while the rose uses bold red tones with fine highlights. Loose black and red splatter marks spread around the skull and rose, and the frame is a close crop showing the skin and part of a striped top.

Realism Back Skull Rose Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stain came back every Thursday, no matter how often Mrs Ferrier scrubbed it. A splash of red at the height of a man's shoulder, then black blotches like spilled ink, and at the centre, if you stood on the bed and tilted the lamp, a skull with its jaw half open, as though it had been caught mid-sentence. You found it on your third night at Gull House, when the sea wind rattled the sash and the room smelled of coal dust and Brasso.

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Mrs Ferrier said nothing about it. She said the rent was due Friday, that the bathwater ran cold after eight, and that the gentleman in room four had been asked to leave for smoking in bed. She counted the spoons twice. But on Thursdays she came up with a bucket she did not need and stood in the doorway looking at the wall with her mouth tight. Once she said, 'My Walter painted roses, you know. Badly. He thought he was Turner.'

You asked what had happened to Walter. She said the sea had happened to him, off the Kentish flats in March 1958, and that the lifeboat found his hat but not him. The roses had been everywhere then, on the tea caddies and the bathroom tiles, and she had stripped every one. The stain was the only thing he had left that she could not get out.

On the last Thursday before you left, you climbed onto the bed with a damp cloth and did not scrub. You traced the rose instead, red running into black, until the shape of the bloom came clear under your thumb. Mrs Ferrier came up with the bucket, saw what you had done, and set it down. She did not ask you to stop. She only said the room would be yours from October, if you wanted it, and that the wallpaper could stay as it was.