Traditional style colour tattoo of a death's head moth with a skull on its thorax, placed on the outer upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Traditional death's head moth on an arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A large death's head moth with outspread wings sits on the skin, with a white skull marking on its thorax. Bold black outlines, solid fills and banded red, teal, yellow and green wing patterns define the design. The moth is centred on the arm against a dark background, with the upper body of the wings filling most of the frame.

Traditional Upper arm Moth Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The honey house smelled of wax and cold iron in December, and that was where you found the moth, pressed flat against the inside of the jar that held the last of the blackthorn honey. Your uncle Sid always said they came in from the hives at the back end of the year, hunting sugar in the stores, and that a man should never kill one just because it squeaked at him. You had thought that was an old man's nonsense until you heard it yourself, a thin sound like a gate hinge coming from somewhere under the striped body.

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Sid was out at the back of the barn with the tractor, swearing at the choke. The yard was white. Frost had furred the top rail of every fence, and the lamp in the dairy threw a yellow square across the cobbles that stopped short of the orchard. You carried the jar out under your coat. When you lifted the lid the moth shifted its wings, red bands and teal and that mustard edge going dull in the cold, and the pale skull on its back caught the light like something carved from old bone.

At the orchard gate you stopped. Sid's voice carried over the engine noise: 'Don't you let it near the kitchen.' The bare apple trees stood in rows like people waiting for a bus that wasn't coming. You tipped the jar toward the open air. The moth sat on the rim for a long time, then lifted, slow and heavy, and the red bands flashed once against the dark before it went up over the wall.

When you came back in, Sid asked if you'd done away with it. You said you had. He nodded and went on with his tea, and neither of you mentioned the small grey smear left on the honey-house sill in the morning, the shape of a skull pressed into the frost.