Black and grey flash design of a winged skull with ribbon banners carrying the words I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me.

Winged skull with banner quote

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A central skull sits in front of a pair of feathered wings, with ribbon banners above and below carrying a text quote. The linework is bold and clean, with shading in greys and solid black areas behind the wings and lettering. The composition is symmetrical and fills the whole portrait frame, with small lightning-bolt accents on either side of the lower banner.

Traditional Skull Wing Banner Lettering Quote Lightning Angel Beast

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ewe had been down in the lower field since before light, and Dad's old Land Rover wouldn't start, so it was me, the dog and the blue torch in the frost. Maud kept looking back over her shoulder as if I'd started the whole thing.

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Halfway across, the fence wire had come down under the snow and the lamb was tangled in it. I knelt in the slush and my fingers went useless with cold. Something rose in me then, the swearing and the urge to kick the gate off its hinges, and under that something quieter that only wanted to sit down in the snow and let the night go on without me. Two of me, I thought, and a third standing behind them holding the pliers.

Brett from the next holding had said once, half cut at the auction, that a man is three men wearing one coat. I'd laughed at him. Now I thought of him, and of the stubbornness that got the lamb free, and the gentle hand that tucked her inside my jumper afterwards, and the other voice that shouted at the dog. Each one came when I called. None of them asked my leave.

By dawn the lamb was on her feet, bleating at the gate, and the sky over the ridge had gone the colour of pewter. I stood there and understood the choice had never really been about the fence. Every morning I decide which of them gets to open the gate. Today it was the one who came back for the torch.