Black and grey realism tattoo of a clenched fist holding banknotes with script lettering above and below, on the ribs.

Fist gripping cash with script lettering

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A clenched fist grips a fan of banknotes, with one note showing a $100 denomination, set between two blocks of bold script lettering. The fist is shaded with smooth gradients and highlights for a realistic finish, while the lettering has heavy black outlines and grey shading. The design fills the side of the torso, with the script arching above and below the hand.

Realism Lettering Ribs Fist Banknote Money Script Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, and mind the gulls, because this is the one about Silas Penrose and his fist. He skippered the Kittiwake out of Newlyn in the bad years, when the pilchards went deep and the banks paid out in promises. Pay day was Saturday, and Silas paid his crew from inside his oilskin, a fan of notes held tight in one hand, the hundred-dollar bill from a Yankee buyer's IOU on top so the lads could see what they were working for. He never let go of a note until it was counted into a palm, and he never counted twice.

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His deckhands stopped asking for their shares after a while. Young Tom Hosken did ask once, in March, with the wind howling off the Lizard, and Silas just closed that fist harder and told him the sea paid in its own coin. Tom went ashore on the next tide and never came back to the boat. Nobody blamed the sea for that.

Then came the night the Kittiwake rolled over on the Runnel Stone. Silas was found on the shingle at dawn, half drowned, and when they pried his hand open the notes had gone to grey pulp in his palm, the hundred still folded inside. They laid them out on the harbour wall to dry, and the wind took them one at a time, lifting each sodden sheet over the rail and out across the bay, until nothing was left in the fist but a little salt and the shape of the grip.