Black and grey tattoo of a shaded skull inside a bold spade shape, placed on the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Skull within a spade on the upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A large spade symbol with a thick black outline frames a shaded human skull with white highlights along its brow, cheekbones and teeth. The skull is rendered in smooth greyscale shading against a dark interior, giving a three-dimensional effect. The tattoo fills most of the frame on pale skin, with a faint partial tattoo visible at the far left edge.

Realism Back Skull Spade Playing card Teeth

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ace of spades had been lying face down beneath Walter Crane's tumbler since half past nine, and in all that time nobody at the table had touched it. The back room of the Sailors' Rest smelt of wet wool and paraffin. Outside, the Humber slapped against the staithes, and the gulls had gone quiet the way they did before weather.

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Crane had won the Thursday game eleven weeks running. He dealt with a tidy, bored economy and never looked at the faces of the men he was taking money from, only at their hands. Young Tom Ashby had already lost his share of the boat and half his father's watch. He pushed his last coin into the pot with two fingers, as though it might bite.

"Show," said Crane. Ashby turned his cards over: a pair of fours and nothing else. Crane lifted his glass, and the card beneath it caught the lamplight. He had not dealt it all night. It had come up from the box that morning, slipped into the fresh pack by a man who never gave his name. The spade had a border as thick as a bootlace, and inside the black, a skull was working its way up through the grey like something surfacing from deep water.

Crane turned the card over. The skull grinned up at the table, and the boy went the colour of candle wax. Crane had cheated for thirty years and never once been caught by his own hand. He pushed the pot across. "Take your watch back, lad," he said, and reached for the next card in the pack, which was the ace of spades again, face up, though he had not dealt it.