Black and grey full sleeve tattoo of stacked skulls, wisps of smoke and a shadowed figure, shown on the upper arm, shoulder and forearm from three angles.

Skulls and smoke full arm sleeve

Realism · Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

Three photographs show a full arm sleeve of stacked human skulls, one large skull near the shoulder and smaller skulls down the upper arm, with wisps of smoke and flame-like forms rising between them. The skulls are rendered with smooth grey shading, cracks and fine detail, and a shadowed, skeletal figure sits lower on the forearm. The sleeve is entirely black and grey against a plain dark background.

Realism Shoulder Upper arm Forearm Skull Smoke Flame Sleeve Figure Crack

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Margery, the snow has shut the pass now and Mr Hale has finally stopped pretending the road will open by Tuesday. We are eleven at table, and four of them are carters who have quit cursing and started telling ghost stories, which is worse. Yesterday the men dug out the cellar steps to clear a drift and found the old niche behind the wine racks, the one the abbey monks bricked up. Forty skulls, maybe more, stacked like cannonballs and grey as river stones. Mr Hale wants them carted to the churchyard. Nobody will touch the big one at the top.

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The big one is cracked across the crown, a seam like a frozen stream, and when the parlour fire is lit the smoke rolls up the flue and comes back down the cellar stair to pool around it. Tom Peel swears the smoke wears the shape of a face. I told him that was the damp wood, not the dead. He crossed himself anyway and then asked me to write to his mother for him, in case.

Last night I went down with the lamp to fetch the good brandy. The skulls sat in their shelves like a congregation waiting for the bell. Between them the smoke moved slow, licking up over the cheekbones and thinning into threads, and at the bottom of the stack a shadow stood with its hands folded, as if it had come to collect a debt. I counted the skulls twice. Forty-one both times. I have not told anyone the second number.

The thaw is forecast for Thursday. I am going down with a bucket of sand and a trowel, and I mean to brick the niche shut myself before anyone else goes looking for what was left behind. Burn this letter when you have read it, and do not let the post boy keep the stamp.