Fine line black script reading good vibes on the side of a torso, just below the ribs, under a grey crop top.

Good vibes script on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A close crop of a torso showing the words good vibes written in thin black cursive script on the side of the body, below the ribs. The linework is fine and even, with the letters in solid black ink and no shading. The muted grey top and soft skin tones keep the focus on the small lettering.

Fine line Lettering Ribs Script Text Quote

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You find the napkin wedged under the sugar dispenser at the top of Gallow Pass, in the café with the broken door hinge where lorry drivers drink tea that tastes of the urn. Someone has written on it in fine biro, leaning hard on the downstrokes as if the pen were trying to get away: 'good vibes', and beneath it, smaller, 'keep left past the cattle grid'.

Keep reading

You have been driving since four with the heater dead and a sour feeling in the clutch. The woman behind the counter, Maureen Tolley with flour to her elbows, says the napkin belonged to a boy who cycled up every Tuesday for a year, ordered one scone and wrote something on a paper before he left. She keeps them in a biscuit tin. There are forty-one. You read three before the kettle boils, and each one is a small instruction for the road ahead.

Outside, the wind has the grey hush of a long afternoon. You take the left at the cattle grid, the way the note said, and the road drops towards the reservoir where the water is the colour of pewter. Halfway down the clutch goes slack, then bites again, and you laugh out loud alone in the car, because someone once thought a stranger might need that exact sentence.

At the bottom a dog walker lifts a hand. You pull the napkin from your pocket, smooth it flat against the steering wheel and add a line under the boy's words in your own untidy hand: 'keep left, and the scones are worth the detour'.