Black ink drawing of a skull with two bats and draped pearl chains set with dark gems, shown as a tattoo design on grey paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull with bats and pearl chains

Black and grey · Flash

A detailed drawing of a human skull framed by two bats with outstretched wings, with a crescent moon behind the skull. Strands of pearls and dark gemstone clusters loop across the skull and hang beneath it, with small feathers at the lower edges. The work is in fine pen linework and stippled shading on a warm grey background, and the symmetrical composition is centred on the skull.

Skull Bat Pearl Chain Gemstone Feather Moon

Find an artist for this

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 Maggie,

Keep reading

I did not come to the reunion on Saturday, and you will have guessed why, because you always could tell when I was hiding behind the coat stand. The hall smelled the same, floor polish and wet wool, and Mr Pettigrew still gave the same speech about the old oak in the quad. I sat in the car park with the engine off and watched the bats come out over the playing fields, the way they used to over the chapel roof when we sneaked out after prep.

Your mother's pearls are still in my dressing table drawer. I took them out on Sunday, the strand that snapped the night she died, and found the clasp mended with a bit of black wire, neat as a stitch. I think she did it herself. She was always the sort who fixed things rather than threw them away. I have been trying to decide whether to send them back to you or leave them with the old skull from the biology room, which Miss Ansell gave me the year we left, and which I have never had the nerve to return.

The moon was thin on Saturday night. You remember how we swore on it, the pact about leaving the town, and how neither of us kept it. I am not sorry. I have a garden now, and a neighbour who keeps bees, and the bats come down to the lamp by the back gate every evening, just as they did above the chapel.

Come and see the pearls. Bring the bad coffee and the good scissors. I will put the kettle on and we can argue about whether that clasp is worth mending again.

Love, Ruth