Black ink blackwork tattoo of a sugar skull built from a bicycle, chainrings and a chain, on a calf.

Sugar skull made of bicycle parts on a calf

Blackwork · Calf · Black and grey · Photo

A sugar skull design where a bicycle forms the forehead, with chainrings above and a chain making up the teeth. The linework is solid black with clean outlines, filled areas and decorative swirls around the nose and cheeks. It is shown in black ink only, filling the frame on a calf against a wooden floor.

Blackwork Calf Bicycle Sugar skull Skull Chain Wheel

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lift at Calder House had been broken since August, so Dev carried the bikes up the stairs himself, two at a time, one on each shoulder, swearing at every landing. Nobody asked him to. He kept his tools in a biscuit tin on the shelf above the mops in the bin store, and the whole block knew the sound of that tin rattling at night.

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On the first of November he knocked on my door with a carrier bag of rusted parts. "Hold this," he said, and pushed a chainring the size of a dinner plate into my hands. He spent the evening on the balcony floor with a mug of tea going cold beside him, laying out a skull on the concrete. The frame made the forehead, two wheels sat where the eyes should be, and spokes fanned up above it like the rays on a church window. He used the chain for the teeth, link by link, frowning at it the way my nan frowned at a crossword.

Mrs Abara from twelve said it was morbid. Her husband would have called it a waste of good steel. Dev only shrugged. "Everything round here gets left out in the rain," he said. "At least this one's got a face."

By morning the wind had come in sideways and the lines had softened. Someone from the fourth floor had been out in the night and taken the chain-teeth off the concrete, one link at a time, and lined them up on my doormat with a note tucked under the last one. It said sorry in capitals. Dev picked up the links, turned them over in his palm, and laughed until he had to sit down on the step.