Flash design of a watercolour-style skull with a butterfly, leafy branches and a Roman numeral clock, drawn in ink on a white background.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull, butterfly and clock design

Botanical · Mixed · Flash

The design centres on a human skull with a butterfly perched above it and a Roman numeral clock hanging below, linked by thin branches and leaves. The skull and clock are drawn with fine ink linework and hatching, while the butterfly and washes around the skull use pink, teal and burgundy tones that fade into loose splashes. The subject is arranged as a tall, vertical composition on a plain white background.

Botanical Skull Butterfly Clock Roman numeral Branches Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The landlady has stopped the clock in the back parlour, so you ask the stable boy the hour and he shrugs as though hours have gone out of fashion this winter. The snow has fallen since Tuesday. Three coaches are buried at the bottom of the lane, and the inn at Hollin Cross has taken in eleven strangers who would rather be anywhere else.

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You find the skull on the top shelf of the coat room, under a bell jar, with a dead red admiral pinned beneath it like a bookmark. Someone has threaded a dry honeysuckle stem through the eye sockets. The label in faded ink reads Mr Ashdown, Surgeon, 1791, and the butterfly beside it has lost one wing to the damp. You mean to ask the landlady who Mr Ashdown was, but she has already told you twice that the dead keep their own business.

That night the wind drops, and you hear meltwater dripping from the eaves, steady as a pulse. You creep to the parlour and lift the glass from the wall clock. Its hands have been set to a quarter past four, the hour the coaches were due, and the brass key lies on the mantel as though someone meant to come back for it. You turn the hands to the true time and wind the key once, and the pendulum takes up its tick like a man clearing his throat.

In the morning the lane is open to the church. The bell jar is empty, with a little silver dust on the glass where the butterfly rested, and the skull sits alone on the shelf, grinning at the light coming through the frost.