Charcoal-style drawing of a skull wearing a black paisley bandana, with a dagger through the jaw, a rosary and a cross hanging below, as a tattoo design.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull in bandana with dagger and rosary

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

A detailed pencil or charcoal drawing of a human skull wearing a black paisley bandana, with a knife blade across the top of the head and a dagger passing under the jaw. A rosary with a small cross hangs below, and one gold tooth is shown in the smile. Shading is greyscale with strong contrasts on the bandana and eye sockets, set on a plain off-white background.

Realism Skull Bandana Knife Dagger Rosary Cross Paisley

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift was dead again, so Ruth carried the bread up eleven flights in a Co-op bag, stopping on every landing to let her knees have their say. On the ninth floor someone had painted a dolphin over the graffiti, and it had already started to peel. Gwen Abbott lived at the top of Harrow House, and everybody knew she kept a skull on her windowsill that had come off a ship, though nobody could agree which sea.

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Gwen opened the door in a black headscarf knotted at the back, a rosary looped over the handle like a dog lead. "You're late," she said, which was how she said thank you. The kettle was already on. While it rattled, she told the story she always told when the lift broke. Years back, when the flats were new and the stairwells still smelled of wet cement, a man called Joe Mallon walked the building every night with nothing in his hands but a folded bandana and the rosary his mother had given him. He carried a dagger too, but never drew it. He just wore it, slid under his jaw like a hint, and the lads at the bins took the hint.

Ruth asked what happened to him. Gwen poured the tea and looked at the skull as if it might answer for him. "He went down one night to stop a row by the bins and came back up with a split lip and a gold tooth he'd paid for out of his first proper wage. Said it was so he'd remember he'd been poor. Then he moved to Bristol and we never heard from him again." She tapped the cross against her mug. "Folk round here say he's still on the stairs, counting the landings."

The lift gave a shudder and a long mechanical sigh, and the doors slid open on the ninth floor. Nobody had touched the button. Gwen didn't look up. She crossed herself, said, "Joe's about, then," and reached for the bread.