Unicorn skull on a forearm
Forearm · Black and grey · Photo
A skull with a spiralled unicorn horn and wispy, flowing mane is tattooed on the outer forearm. The linework is fine and the skull is shaded in soft greys with mottled texture around the eye sockets and jaw. The tattoo is shown against a plain white wall, with the wearer's wrist and hand crossed in front of a black top.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
Sit down, the lot of you, the last train's been cancelled and the kettle's still warm. You'll want the story about the mare, the one who came off the Thursday goods. Nobody on the platform at Hollin Cross would say her name after dark, so I shan't either.
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She was a grey thing, dappled at the flank, with a horn on her brow as long as a tallow dip, spiralled like a barber's pole. She ran the length of the down line every night at the stroke of twelve, her mane streaming out behind her like smoke off a firebox. Signalman Tobias Wren swore she was a trick of the lamps. Then one February she stood square on the crossing and would not budge for the Manchester express. He stepped out with his lantern, and she bent her head and touched the horn to his palm, cold as a chisel, and he felt himself go quiet inside, the way a clock stops.
Next morning they found the lantern lying on the sleepers, the mare gone, and in the cutting a skull, picked clean and white as chalk, the horn still fixed to it. Wren was never seen again, but the skull sat on his box in the signal cabin for forty years. Every time a train came through, the wisps of grey mane on the bone seemed to lift and settle, as if something had only just run past.
So mind the crossing, and if you see a grey shape at midnight, don't reach for it. Drink your tea.
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