Traditional style flash design of a skull pierced by a dagger, with a snake coiled around it and the words MAKE OR DIE beside it, drawn in black and mustard with halftone shading.

Skull, dagger and snake flash design

Traditional · Mixed · Flash

A flat drawing of a grinning skull with a dagger driven through its top, a mustard and black snake coiled around the skull and blade, and the words MAKE OR DIE set in bold capitals to the right. The bold black outlines and simple fills are typical of traditional flash, with the mustard areas and hilt shaded using halftone dot patterns. The composition is centred on a white background with the snake's head rising at the upper left.

Traditional Skull Dagger Snake Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ivy,

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Dad has finally given up on the cellar pump, so you will forgive the smudges. I am writing at the kitchen table with the wireless on low. Mr Cawley came into the forge on Tuesday wanting the old board taken down from behind the door. You know the one: Grandad's dagger through the skull, the snake looped round the blade, and MAKE OR DIE painted across the top in square letters he copied from a tram ticket. Mr Cawley says the children who come for paraffin stop dead in the doorway and stare at it. I told him the only people frightened by it are those who have never had to earn a penny in this town.

I took it down myself after he left, because nobody else was going to touch it with the rain coming. Turning it over on the bench, I found pencil on the back in Grandad's hand. Names, dates and sums beside them, most of them crossed through. Harold Pike, 1931, eleven shillings. The Co-op, never paid, with a little skull drawn next to it. The list runs to two pages, and every name I recognise is someone who came back through that door years later with the money in an envelope and a sheepish grin.

So I have put the board back up on two new nails, the snake facing the lane where the carts come in. Mr Cawley can look the other way. Tomorrow I am going to add my own name to the back, with a sum beside it and a tick once it is settled. Come home at Easter and I will show you. Bring your good pencils.

Love, Maggie