Realistic coloured tattoo of a rainbow trout, antlers and a deer skull across a man's upper back and shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Trout, antlers and skull on a back

Realism · Back · Colour · Photo

A green, spotted rainbow trout with a pink stripe along its flank sits above a pale deer skull with antlers, and a second trout curves behind them. The subjects are drawn with detailed shading and fine texture on the scales and bone. Colour ink dominates, with greens, pinks and soft beige tones, set on the upper back.

Realism Back Fish Antler Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dad had the trout gutted on the slab before the kettle boiled, its flank still flushing pink where the stripe ran from gill to tail. He lifted the stag's skull off the nail above the bothy door and set it on the table between us, the way he always did when a catch was worth bragging about. "Go on, tell her where you got him," he said, though the only thing I'd caught all morning on Scarth Pass was a cold ear and a grudge.

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The skull had come off the bog below the pass the winter the snow lay until May. Dad had boiled the head in a washing-soda pot in the yard, scrubbing until the bone went the colour of weak tea. Ma said a skull in a hut was a guest who never went home, and she wrapped it in a tea towel whenever the vicar came up with the parish post. Dad never wrapped anything. He liked his dead things where he could see them.

The trout had come out of the tarn at the top of the pass, where the water board stocked rainbows in the sixties and the spotted fish had outlived every promise made about them. I cut the second one from the bottom of the net, longer than my forearm, and drew the knife along its belly. The flesh parted in a clean line, and for a moment it was the exact colour of the sky the evening Ma walked down to the village and didn't come back up.

"You'll keep the head for the stock," Dad said. I didn't answer. I hung the skull back on its nail myself, antlers first, and left the fish open on the slab for the gulls.