Four black stencil-style antelope head designs in descending sizes, each showing wavy horns, ears and eyes on a white background.

Stylised antelope head designs in four sizes

Black and grey · Flash

The image shows four versions of a stylised antelope head, arranged from largest at the top to smallest at the bottom right, all drawn in solid black on white. Each design has long, wavy, tapering horns, swept-back ears and small oval eyes, with no shading or fine detail. The sizes differ only in scale, so the set reads like a sheet of stencil or flash options.

Horn Head Ear Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven door is still ticking as you slide the last tray onto the rack, and the flour on your forearms has gone grey in the lamplight. Mrs Okafor's order hangs on the nail by the back door, pencilled on the back of a seed catalogue: forty cobs, and two loaves for the christening in Hollin Row, each scored into the shape of a beast's head. You have never scored a beast before. You have only ever made the plain tin and the split batch.

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You take the razor blade on its wooden handle and follow the sketch your grandfather left taped inside the flour bin. He always said the horns of those long-faced antelope on the old tin sign grew like rope twisted in a wet hand, one turn after another, never quite level. You laughed at him over the bench for years. Now the blade drags through the dough and the curve wants to close, so you go slowly, letting each wave open a little more than you think it should.

Outside, the street is still black. A milk float whines past and its headlamp slides across the shelves, over the bread knives and the bucket of starter, and for a second the scored shapes on the tray look alive, their ears swept back as if they have heard something in the road. You press two small ovals for eyes with the tip of the blade and the crust gives way with a soft tick.

By six the first van is at the kerb. You box the forty cobs and wrap the two beasts separately in greaseproof paper. Then you keep the last one back, the one that came out with a cracked horn, and set it on the windowsill facing the dark road, its eyes turned toward the place where the light will come up over the Hollin Row turn.