Black ink outline tattoo of an open book with the word Escape in lettering beside it, on the skin of a foot or ankle.

Escape lettering with an open book

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A single-needle style outline of an open book sits on the skin, with the word Escape in serif lettering rising above its pages. The linework is dark and fairly uniform, with light shading inside the pages to suggest depth. The image is entirely black and grey, with a close crop focused on the tattoo.

Lettering Other Book Lettering

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock above the nurses' station says ten past three, and the ward has gone quiet in the way that only means someone is about to need you. Your paperback lies face down on the medicine trolley, spine cracked at page two hundred and twelve, untouched since midnight. Mrs Okafor in bed six wants her pillows plumped for the third time, so you plump them, because that is the job and the book will keep.

Keep reading

It is a secondhand copy of The Salt Causeway, bought for forty pence from the charity shop on Cowley Road, its cover soft as an old tea towel. A ferry, a fog bank, a man in oilskins who never once looks back at the harbour. You have read it four times now. Between obs you read a page or two, the way other people sneak a cigarette, and each page takes a little of the corridor's hum away with it.

At half three the lift doors open onto nobody. Just a porter wheeling an empty chair towards the stairwell, and the smell of wet pavement drifting in behind him. You find yourself turning to the back of the book, where a library slip is still tucked inside the cover, its stamp faded to grey. Someone has pencilled beneath the last due date: keep going, the boat leaves at dawn.

You fold the corner of page two hundred and twelve, slide the book into the pocket of your cardigan, and look up at the exit sign above the doors, its green letters steady as a lighthouse. At six the day staff will arrive with their coffee and their questions. You will not be here to answer them.