Black lettering reading Victim with a line through it above Survivor, with a coloured pencil and pink eraser, tattooed on a forearm.

Crossed-out Victim and Survivor lettering with pencil

Lettering · Forearm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the word Victim in black lettering with a horizontal line through it, sitting above the word Survivor in larger black letters. A coloured pencil with green and yellow stripes and a pink eraser rests diagonally beside the words, with the eraser touching the crossed-out word. The lettering is solid black with bold strokes, and the pencil is shaded in colour, so the piece is mixed in tone. The image is a close, straight-on photo of the forearm with the tattoo filling the centre of the frame.

Lettering Forearm Pencil Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The lock at Hythe Cut froze again on Tuesday, so we tied up under the willows and I finally opened Mam's tally book, the green cloth one with the broken spine. Every coal load and sack of malt she carried down to Ware is in there in her square capitals. At the back, on the last page she wrote on, there is a line that stopped me cold. It says VICTIM in pencil, then one flat stroke through it, and underneath, pressed harder, SURVIVOR.

I know what you'll say. You'll say she was always one for the dramatic and that a bargee's wife has no time for fancy words. But the pencil is the blue carpenter's stub she kept behind her ear, and I remember how she'd lick her thumb and rub at a wrong sum until the paper went grey. She never rubbed this out. The pink eraser is still clipped to the end of the pencil, and I think she left it there on purpose, so whoever read the book would know the word could be taken back if she'd wanted to.

Dad always said the Cut was the only honest thing in the county because it never pretended it was going anywhere but down to the sea. I used to think that was a sad thing to say. Now I think he meant it kindly, that you can keep moving on water even with a hole in the hull.

Come up at Easter if the ice goes. Bring the old chart box and the stub of pencil you pinched from the lock office, because I want to finish the page with her, and I don't trust my own hand for the capitals.

Your sister, Nell