Realistic black and grey Cheshire Cat face wearing a top hat, with script quotes above and below, tattooed across a person's upper back.

Cheshire Cat and top hat quote on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A realistic cat face with large shaded eyes and a wide grin sits across the upper back, with a brown-toned top hat above it. Ornate script lettering surrounds the hat and runs along the lower curve of the grin, with the words partly obscured by the cat's outline. The shading is smooth and soft, and the image is taken straight on with even lighting.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The booth at Coquelles smells of cold coffee and wet wool, and the officer behind the glass has already typed your name twice. "Purpose of travel?" You tell her the truth, which is that you are carrying a hatbox across two countries for a man named Tobias Quill who has never once opened it. She looks at the passport photo, then at you, then at the hatbox, which is ticking faintly because the clock inside is still set to Lisbon time.

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"Who are you, exactly?" she asks, not unkindly. You say what you always say at borders, that you knew who you were this morning, but you have been changed a few times since then, and it would be rude to hold a grown woman to the version that woke up at six. She does not laugh. She taps a key. The screen flickers the way it does when a machine is deciding whether to be offended.

Behind her a radio crackles about a delayed coach from Ghent. Somebody in the queue is singing badly. The officer leans closer to the glass and lowers her voice. "Between us, the whole queue's mad. Every one of them is driving somewhere they've already been." She slides the passport back under the slot with the stamp already pressed, a crooked violet thing that looks, unmistakably, like a smile with nothing attached.

You thank her, take the hatbox, and walk out into the rain where the gate lights blink. Behind you the clock inside the box strikes an hour that doesn't exist, and for once nobody in the queue turns around to ask what time it is.

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