Black and grey linework tattoo of a cigarette pack with the words Whatever Lights, sitting on the inner forearm.

Cigarette pack on a forearm

Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A cigarette pack drawn in clean black outline, with several cigarettes rising from the top and their tips filled in solid black. The pack bears the words Whatever Lights in a simple lettering style, and the design is shown in greyscale on a forearm against a pale background.

Forearm Cigarette Lettering Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, love, the oven gives back its heat faster than you'd think, and you'll want your hands near it while I tell you about Alfie Pruett and the packet that never ran out. He came through the back door every morning at quarter to five for two split tins, and every morning he had a fresh pack in his coat. When I asked him why he bought so many, he'd tap the front of it and say, whatever lights, Ruth. That was his whole philosophy, and he was a poor man to argue with before six.

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The February the gas pilot died, we had a week's wait for the engineer and not a single match in the place. The flood had seen to the box on the shelf. Alfie stood there in his wet boots watching the dough sag on the board, and then he pulled out his packet, shook five cigarettes into his palm and laid them along the edge of the tray like soldiers. He held each one to the bare jet until it caught, let it burn down to a black tip, then dropped it in the sink and took the next. By the fifth the main burner was roaring and the first loaves were going in.

I told him he'd wasted a good packet. He told me the cigarettes had only ever been there to get things started, and that he'd been meaning to quit anyway. He quit that morning, or said he did, and never bought another pack where I could see it.

When the shop sold up, I found one last cigarette rolled into the corner of the flour bin, its tip burnt black. I've kept it on the windowsill ever since. Nobody has ever asked me why the sill smells faintly of smoke at dawn, and I let them think it's the bread.