Black and white photo of a black script tattoo reading "Monsters are real" on the inner wrist, in a lettering style.

"Monsters are real" script on a wrist

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the inner wrist and part of the hand, with the words "Monsters are real" set across two lines in a thin, handwritten-style script. The lettering is fine and dark, with uniform linework and no shading. The image is black and white, with strong light falling across the skin and dark shadow at the edges of the frame.

Lettering Fine line Forearm Monster Phrase Script Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry man at Saltcote Crossing had a rule about lanterns. Carry one after dark or stay on the near bank, he told every traveller, and he said it so often that the children on the quay could recite it with him. Nobody asked why. The water between the two countries was black and quiet, and the tide there ran the wrong way twice a day.

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One November a woman came down the steps with a satchel, a red scarf and no lantern. The ferry man, whose name was Dorran, looked at her hands, which were empty, and then at the sky, which was not. He put out his palm and she laid a coin in it. He did not ask her where she was going. He only pointed to the thwart and said that the far bank kept its own hours, and she should sit where he could see her.

Halfway over, the fog came off the water in a single breath and the oars stopped making any sound. Something moved under the boat, long and patient, and the woman pressed her palm flat against the wood of the seat. She did not scream. She turned her wrist up in the grey light and read the words written there, the ink as sharp as the day it was set, and she said them aloud, quietly, the way a person reads a notice pinned to a gate.

The thing beneath the hull sank away. Dorran rowed on and said nothing, though he had heard her, and he had long ago stopped telling the children that the rule was for the monsters. It was for the people who forgot to believe in them.