Black ink tattoos on an arm in a traditional style, showing a hooded skull, crossbones, an eye and the words BYE BYE, with a spiral tattoo on the hand.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull, crossbones and BYE BYE on an arm

Traditional · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a forearm with several black tattoos: a hooded skull with a crossbones beneath it, a skull at the top edge, an eye with radiating lines, and the words BYE BYE above a larger hooded skull. The linework is bold and solid with simple fills, and there is no colour ink. The arm fills most of the frame, with another hand holding it from below and a spiral tattoo visible on the fingers.

Traditional Forearm Skull Crossbones Eye Hood Spiral Hand

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Mr Okafor, I'm leaving the rota under the lemon magnet on the fridge, because you never read anything that isn't a bill, and the lemon is the only thing in this flat you look at. Don't take the Tuesday list personally. Three names on it had already gone when I got to the doors, so I did what I always do and wrote BYE BYE on the step in chalk, which is more than the council ever managed.

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You'll think I've lost it. Perhaps I have. Every night since the tram depot closed I've walked the same loop from Attercliffe to the canal, hood up against the drizzle, scythe wrapped in a bin bag because nobody on the number 52 wants to sit beside it. The crossbones came off the bus shelter ads, the eye is the one above the cathedral clock that never blinks, and I've spent eleven years watching the city's lights go out one flat at a time.

Last Thursday a boy of about nine stopped me outside the chippy and asked if I was the one who came for his nan. I said no, love, I'm the one who comes after. He looked at my boots, then at the chalk on my fingers, and asked me to draw the skull again, so I did, badly, on the pavement under the streetlight. He said it looked like it was waving. I think about that more than I'd like.

So this is the end of my shift. Keep the lemon. Keep the hood on the hook. If anyone asks for me at the depot, tell them I've gone to sit by the canal to watch the boats come in with their lights on, and that I was never much good at this. Bye bye, Mr Okafor.