Black ink flash design of a skull shaped teacup above two crossed cigarettes, in a traditional style with grey shading.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull teacup with crossed cigarettes flash

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A drawn tattoo design showing a skull whose head forms the bowl of a teacup, with a handle on the right and two crossed cigarettes below. The bold black outlines are filled with soft grey shading on cream paper, and a blue handled paintbrush sits at the right edge. The composition is centred and symmetrical, with the cup filling the upper half of the sheet.

Traditional Skull Teacup Cigarette

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fourth cup of the afternoon came back to Nell Garrity with the leaves clotted round the rim, and she knew before she tipped it that the lad across the trestle would not like what she had to say.

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She kept the skull cup for herself. Ambrose had won it off a pitch-man in Skegness, the bowl grinning like a bad joke, and he swore the leaves read truer through its bone-white glaze. Nell turned it slowly in the lamplight. Shapes settled and dissolved: a long road, a hook that might be a handle, and low down, two crossed lines that could have been sticks or could have been the cigarettes Ambrose used to roll with one thumb while he talked nonsense about the weather. "Well?" said Terry Mullins, cracking his knuckles against the table edge.

"You're going on the road with your brothers on Monday," she said. "The leaves are clear on that, clear as a sign on a barn door." He laughed too loudly and asked about the girl from the candyfloss stall, Lil, and whether she might take him back. Nell looked into the grounds for a long moment and said nothing at all, which was the kindest thing she had to give him.

After he'd gone she shook the cup out onto the grass behind the tent, watched the wet leaves spread over the dew, and lit one of Ambrose's last cigarettes from the tin on the stool. Ash fell on the skull's grin. She let it lie there.