Black and grey drawing of a skull with bat wings and a small bat at its jaw, shown as a neo-traditional tattoo design on white paper.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Winged skull with bat design

Neo-trad · Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey drawing on white paper shows a cracked skull with bat wings spreading behind it, claws curling at the top and bottom edges. A small bat sits near the lower jaw, and the bold black outlines are filled with solid areas and grey shading on the skull and bone. The composition is a single centred figure with no body part visible.

Neo-trad Skull Bat Wing Claw

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has sealed the Hollin Gate road since noon, and the landlady of the Crow and Lantern has stopped pretending anyone will be digging out before morning. You sit at the end of the long oak bar with a mug of mulled cider going cold in your hands, listening to the wind worry at the shutters. Above the fireplace hangs a brass bell with a split tongue, and every few minutes a draught finds the flue and makes it ring once, like someone at the door who thinks better of knocking.

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The traveller in the corner has kept his hat on since he came in. A leather satchel rests on his knees, and inside it a small grey bat hangs from a wire cage no bigger than a teacup. When the bell rings he lifts his head towards the sound, the way a hound does at a distant horn. Nobody asks what he carries. The landlady sets a bowl of broth at his elbow without being asked, then makes the sign of the cross, quickly, the way people do when they believe no one is looking.

Near midnight the satchel slips and you see the skull inside, cracked across the crown, its eye sockets packed with old candle wax. Bat wings are folded around it like a cloak cut for a larger man. The traveller catches you looking. "Vesper," he says, as if introducing a dog. "He was a sexton once. Wagered the Devil a winter's worth of graves and lost his face in the payment. The wings were the Devil's idea of a joke." He strokes the bone with one black fingernail. "Every year he asks for a warm room and a name to keep."

The bell stops. The fire settles. The traveller lifts the satchel and holds it out to you, and the cage door is open, the bat already gone from it. Something light lands on your shoulder, cold as a coin. "Mind the name," the traveller says. "He remembers what you give him." Outside, the snow keeps falling, and somewhere behind the shutters a small voice begins to count.