Black and grey Batman mask tattoo on a forearm, with bats, a bat logo and the typed quote Why do we fall sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.

Batman mask and quote on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded Batman mask sits near the top of the forearm, with a cluster of small bats flying out from its edge. Below it, a typewriter-style quote runs across the arm, and a solid bat emblem with a trail of bats sits at the lower end. The tattoo uses only black ink and grey shading on pale skin against a glossy, dark background.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Twelfth night on the rock, and the bats have found the lamp room again. Forty or so, hanging from the brass rail where the mantle ticks as it warms, and when I came up the stair with the paraffin they lifted all together like a shaken sheet and poured out through the cracked pane over the sea. Mrs Coyle at the mainland shop says they are drowned keepers come back to check our work. I say they are only after the warmth, which is more than the Board's inspector ever gave us.

Keep reading

The typed sheet came with Thursday's boat, folded inside a tin of tea. No name, only the flat black capitals of an old typewriter: WHY DO WE FALL, SIR. Underneath, someone had struck the keys again, slower, as if each letter had to be pressed out by hand: SO THAT WE CAN LEARN TO PICK OURSELVES UP. I pinned it above the logbook and read it every time I wound the clockwork, and I still could not tell whether it was meant for me or for the boy who fell from the lower gallery last March and lay three hours on the wet ledge before anyone thought to look.

Tonight I climbed the stair without the rail. The iron was slick and I counted the rungs under my breath, the way my mother counted her beads. At the top the bats were settling again, a dark fold along the inside of the lantern glass. I did not shoo them. I trimmed the wick, turned the brass key, and the beam swung out across the water in its long, patient arc. Somewhere below, a small shape pushed off the ledge and rose up into the light.

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