Close-up of a fine line black script tattoo of the word unless on the side of the body, above a dark garment.

Fine line script word tattoo reading unless

Fine line · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the word unless written in a single thin black script, with a long looping tail extending to the right. The linework is even and crisp, with no shading, and the ink sits flatly on pale skin. The word fills the centre of the frame, with a dark garment edge running along the bottom.

Fine line Lettering Other Word Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Skipper Harold Quayle never wrote a plain order in his life. On the wheelhouse slate of the Mary Tallis it always read Sail at five, weather permitting, and under that, in the small hand he kept for things he didn't want to argue about, unless. Nobody on the fleet ever saw him finish the sentence with a reason.

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The winter I was seventeen he wrote it on a Tuesday, when the barometer was sliding down the glass like a dropped coin. We went out anyway. The sea was grey as slate and the nets came up full of weed and one lonely boot. Quayle stood at the wheel with his jaw set and never once looked at the sky. When the mate asked why he'd let us sail, he only said the word had been on the board before the glass moved.

We came home on the flood with the wind backing north. Three boats out of Scarborough did not. Quayle's slate was still on the wall when we tied up, and his wife had come down to the quay in his old oilskin, carrying a tin of tea. She took the chalk from the wheelhouse, rubbed out the first half of the line, and left the single word standing, its long tail running off the edge of the board.

Next morning the slate still said unless. Nobody on the quay mentioned the rest of the sentence, and we all stayed ashore.