Black and grey lettering tattoo reading DON'T OPEN and DEAD INSIDE beside a door with hands reaching out, shown on the top of both feet.

Door and hands lettering across two feet

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

Two tattoos sit side by side on the tops of the feet, each showing a wooden door with a handle and hands reaching out from its edges. Bold, brushed black lettering spells DON'T OPEN on the left and DEAD INSIDE on the right, with soft grey shading and drips. Reddish smudged shading surrounds the designs and gives the skin a blood-like tone.

Lettering Other Door Hand Lettering Blood

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The stencil on the crate said DON'T OPEN in letters somebody had painted in a hurry, and Maureen Pyke, who ran the lost property office at Hollin Cross station, had read it four times before she signed for the thing. The label gave no sender. It had come off the 04:12 from Carlisle on a hand-truck, and the driver would not look her in the eye when he tipped it onto the lino.

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By Thursday the crate had started to knock. Not loudly. A tap, a pause, then three more, like someone who had been taught manners and forgotten the rest. Maureen put the kettle on, sat with her back to the shelves of umbrellas and odd gloves, and told herself the old station pipes were talking. Pipes did not scratch at the lid from the inside.

Desmond, the night porter, came in for his tea at midnight and found her standing over the crate with a claw hammer and her coat already on. He glanced at the stencil and laughed. 'Dead inside, that lot,' he said, the joke he had made every shift for twenty years. Then the lid lifted an inch, and a grey hand came through the gap, feeling along the floor for the door.

The lift had been out of order since spring, so they did the only sensible thing. They locked the office from outside, went upstairs, and Maureen sat at the desk with a fresh lost property form. In the box marked CONTENTS she wrote, in her neatest hand, one passenger, unclaimed, and filed it under things nobody wanted back.