Black tribal scorpion tattoo in solid blackwork linework across the upper arm and shoulder of a person in a white vest top.

Tribal scorpion on upper arm

Blackwork · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A bold black tribal scorpion covers the upper arm and reaches toward the shoulder, with its curved tail and claws drawn in thick, solid shapes. The design uses heavy black fills, cut-out oval markings and tapering spikes, with no shading or colour. The skin is shown in a close, slightly angled photo against a plain background.

Blackwork Upper arm Scorpion Tribal Arm Shoulder

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The steward came up the hill road with two carts and a bad temper, because the castle at Harrowmere had been falling down for eighty years and nobody had yet paid to carry its stones away. He wanted the dressed blocks for a new mill-race wall in the valley. The villagers said the gatehouse was not to be touched. When he asked why, they only pointed at the dark shape curled on the lintel above the arch.

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It had been there since the last lord died, black as a cold hearth, with a row of pale oval holes along its back where the old lead fittings had once been set. Its tail hooked over the keystone and its pincers spread across the stonework like the arms of a man reaching for a rope. The steward laughed and sent his men up with hammers. The first mason had barely struck the wall when the scorpion's tail uncoiled, long and slow, and laid itself across the cart wheel. The wheel split down the middle with a sound like a branch in frost, and nobody argued after that.

The steward slept at the inn with the shutters barred. In the morning both carts stood empty in the lane, and the blocks were back in the gatehouse, fitted together without a crumb of mortar. The scorpion sat on the lintel with its claws open, exactly where it had always been. The steward rode out before noon and never came back to Harrowmere.

Every spring the river rises brown over the valley, and every spring the mill-race wall holds, though it was built from rubble and cheap lime. Harrowmere's children still know which stones are not theirs to take. On the way to school they touch the gatehouse arch for luck, and they look up to check that the dark shape is still curled there, watching the road.