Grey skull tattoo with dripping teardrops and a banner above it, on the outer upper arm of a person in a grey t-shirt.

Skull with banner on upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey tattoo of a skull with a banner across the top, partly reading DON'T BLINK, and teardrops falling from the lower edge. The linework is clean and defined, with soft grey shading across the skull's surface and a slight purple-grey wash in places. The tattoo is centred on the outer upper arm against a plain pale background.

Neo-trad Upper arm Skull Banner Teardrop Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The steward at Greywater Keep kept a skull above the postern gate, and beneath it a strip of tin on which someone long dead had scratched two words. Nobody could say whether the words were a warning or a dare. Bram, the gatekeeper's boy, had been sent up the stair to count the bells in the chapel tower, and he came down white to the lips, swearing the skull had wept.

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Old Maud laughed at him and told him to fetch the lamp oil. She had kept the postern for forty winters and had never seen the skull weep, though she had heard the tale from her mother, who had heard it from hers. The lady of the keep, they said, had watched her husband ride out to the border and never come home, and she had sworn she would keep her eyes open until he did. She wept so hard that her tears ran down the bone, and the bone, out of pity, kept the rest of her awake.

That night a rider came to the gate with a cloak full of rain and a dead man's ring on his finger. Maud looked up at the skull, then at the rider's face, which was nothing like the husband's in the old portrait, and saw the drops swelling on the lower teeth of the bone. She did not blink. She lifted the bar and let the rider in only as far as the lamp, where the whole yard could see him plainly.

Morning came and the rider had gone, taking the ring with him. Maud found the tin strip lying face down on the step, and on its back, in a steady hand, someone had written the rest: DON'T BLINK, AND THE GATE STAYS SHUT.