Black and white ink drawing of two hands clasped in a handshake, with a snake with dripping fangs coiled over the joined hands, in a flash style.

Snake biting a handshake

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink line drawing shows two clasped hands in cuffed sleeves, with a snake wrapped over the top hand and its head lowered toward the lower hand. Three drops fall from the snake's open jaws, drawn as simple outlined teardrop shapes. The linework is bold and even, with solid black cuffs, scale texture on the snake and small dot details, set on a plain white background.

Traditional Snake Hand Drip Blood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The bargain was struck on the quay at Skerrow with the tide still making and the gulls squabbling over a split crab. You put your hand out before Halvard Lund had finished his sentence, because you had already decided, and he took it with his big knuckled grip and did not let go until the price had been said twice over in the wind.

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The snake came out of the lamp crate he had brought across from the mainland. It was grey and banded, no longer than a boathook, and it slid over his wrist as easily as a mooring line over a bollard. Neither of you flinched. You had both been raised on an island where nothing that bites is a surprise, and the old men said a deal sealed with a serpent was the only kind the sea would not claim back.

It was the snake that struck, not Halvard. Its head dropped and its jaws opened over your knuckles, and for a moment the wind dropped too. Three drops fell onto the wet stones of the slipway, dark and round, and the gulls came down at once to see what was left of the bargain. You did not take your hand away. Pride is a poor thing to bleed for, but you had given your word in front of the harbour wall.

Halvard unclasped first and walked off up the hill with his lamps. Next morning the tide had taken the feathers and the crab shell, but not the three dark spots on the slipway. Every spring since, you have been the first boat out of Skerrow and the first to come back, and nobody on the quay has ever asked you to shake on anything again.