Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull peeling back stitched skin with a stylised SOX logo, across the upper arm and shoulder.

Skull with stitched skin on upper arm

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic skull is shown with its skin torn back and stitched along the edges, with a stylised SOX lettering mark sitting above it on the upper arm. The shading is smooth and highly detailed, using deep blacks and soft greys to model bone texture, stitches and shadowed eye sockets. The design wraps from the shoulder down the upper arm, set against plain white clothing.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dearest Tom, the stitches came out of the old man's skull this morning and I could not sleep for it. Mr Halloran at the chapel gate had asked me to close the seam on the bone before the bishop's visit, because the lid had split across the crown and the church wardens would not have a cracked head in the vestry. I am not squeamish, you know that. I sewed harness for your father for twenty years.

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The skull belonged to a man called Ezra Soames, who drowned off the Hebrides in the winter the Fanny went down. Halloran said the crew had cut a pattern from his own sealskin coat and stitched it over the bone, to carry him home after the sea had kept him a fortnight. I found the pattern still tacked inside, a cross and two letters worked in black thread, an S and a looping X, which I did not understand until I turned the piece to the window and saw how the tail of each letter had been pulled tight, the way you draw a boot lace when you mean it to hold.

I did the work with waxed linen and a curved needle. When I finished, the skin lay over the bone like a glove that had found its hand. Halloran paid me in tea and asked nothing. I think he knew I would keep the pattern.

I have it now on the kitchen table, under the lamp. Come home before the thread rots.

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