Flash design of a snarling wolf wearing a red cap with stylised lettering, beside a black circle with crossbones and paint drips, in a bold neo-traditional style.

Snarling wolf in a red cap

Neo-trad · Colour · Flash

A wolf's head is shown in profile, mouth wide open to reveal red gums and bared teeth, wearing a red cap with white stylised lettering. A black circular emblem with white crossbones sits beside the muzzle, with black drips running down from its base. The bold black outlines, flat fills of red, tan and grey, and white highlights give the piece a cartoon-like finish on a plain white background.

Neo-trad Wolf Cap Crossbones Skull Drip Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You have been told not to feed the wolf on Skerrin, and you are feeding him anyway, because he has his head through the window of the ferry shop again and the kettle is still warm. The cap is the first thing you notice, red as a pillar box and too small for his ears, with letters across the front that the gulls have been trying to read for years. Nobody on the island remembers who gave it to him. Old Morag swears it was a fishmonger from Oban. Dougie at the pier says it was a lad with a spray can who wanted a picture of a wolf on the harbour wall and got the lettering wrong.

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The wolf does not care about any of that. He wants the pasty in your hand and he wants it now, and when you hold it back out of reach he opens his mouth wide enough that you can count the teeth, which is four more than a wolf needs. Behind him, someone has painted a black circle on the sea wall with a white cross of bones in the middle, and the paint has been running for a week, long black tears down toward the tideline. Dougie says it marks the ferry rota. Morag says it marks the wolf's territory. You have decided it marks nothing at all, which is why you keep looking at it.

On the last ferry, a man in a grey coat asked you the way to the lighthouse and then asked you about the cap. You told him the truth, which was that it belonged to nobody. He nodded and walked off towards the bothy, and the wolf watched him go with his ears flat under the red felt.

Tomorrow the council will scrub the paint off the wall, and the wolf will still be here, hungry and loud, with the pasty finally in his jaws. You will be standing on the harbour with your hands in your pockets, pretending you did not give it to him.