Black typewriter-style lettering reading In Christ Alone across the upper arm, in a lettering style.

In Christ Alone lettering on an upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of a black ink tattoo reading In Christ Alone with a full stop, set in a typewriter-style serif font across the skin. The lines are crisp and even, with slightly softened edges and no visible shading. The skin is pale and warm-toned, with a knitted sleeve at the left edge and a textured light wall at the right, and the text sits across the centre of the frame.

Lettering Upper arm Text Quote Phrase

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit yourself down on that crate, mind the splinter, and don't mind the smell of the lion, he's been gone since the frost. You want the Halloran Brothers' show? There is no show. There's a ring of sawdust gone grey, a tent with more holes than canvas, and one black typewriter that belonged to Ezra Quill, the advance man.

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Ezra went ahead of the wagons by a week, pasting bills on barns and chapel doors. Every bill he typed ended the same way, two plain words and a full stop, because the old ringmaster's mother had made him promise it. Ezra used to say a sentence without its full stop was a dog without a tail, and he'd set the keys hard so the letters bit into the paper. People in Wigan used to stop and read it twice before they bought their tickets.

The winter the money ran out, Ezra was the last one still typing. He sent letters to towns that had stopped answering and bills for shows that would never be played. On the last night of the season, with the lamps guttering, he rolled a clean sheet into the machine and typed the line once more, then nailed it to the centre pole where the ringmaster used to stand. Nobody came to see it. A little girl from the lane walked in to shelter from the rain, read it aloud with her finger under each word, and asked if the show had started.

The paper's still up there, if you care to look. The ink has gone the colour of weak tea and the sawdust has crept into every letter. But the full stop is still black. Ezra always did set the keys hard.