Black lettering tattoo on the upper arm in fine line script, showing a stack of names, several struck through with lines.

Crossed-out names on upper arm

Fine line · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A stack of handwritten-style names runs down the outer upper arm, with several names crossed through by horizontal strokes and the lower two left legible. The linework is thin and even in black ink, with a loose, script-like lettering style. The tattoo is shown in close focus against a soft, blurred street background, with a light grey top at the edge of the frame.

Fine line Upper arm Name Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Old Mrs Tully kept the halt at Carrow Bridge for forty-one years, and she kept the book too, a green ledger with a broken spine that lived on the shelf above the kettle. Every soul who waited for the night train had to give their name before she lit the lamp. Most gave it cheerfully. Some asked whether the name mattered, and she told them it was the only thing the train could read.

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One winter a boy climbed off the goods wagon with his boots in his hand and said his name was Joseph Lane. She wrote it down. The next night a farmer's wife named Ada Brinks came up the cutting, and after her a man who would only say he was tired. She wrote each one under the last, and each time the train came through the fog and took them, she drew a single line through the name with the nib of her pen, neat and steady, so she would know who had gone on and who was still owed a seat.

Stefan James came last, in the spring, with a violin case and a cough. He asked her to leave his name uncrossed until he was sure of the platform. She told him the book did not work that way. He laughed and said then he would draw the line himself, and he took the pen from her hand and did it, slow and careful, across the very top of the page.

When the train came early the next morning, the old woman found the lamp already burning and the ledger open at the last page. Only two names were left uncrossed at the bottom, and both belonged to people who had not yet stepped off.