Back view of a person with the words MICHAEL JACKSON in black serif capitals running vertically down the spine, with a grey ornamental tattoo on the right shoulder.

Name lettering down the spine

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a person with their head turned away, so no face is visible. Two words in black serif capitals, MICHAEL JACKSON, are set in a vertical line down the centre of the back, with crisp, solid lettering and soft shading around the skin. A larger grey ornamental tattoo with curling, flowing lines sits on the right shoulder and upper back, and the plain indoor background is lit by overhead fluorescent light.

Lettering Back Shoulder Name Serif lettering Script Ornament Spine

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sign over the Palais Verity has been dark since March, and Harold Finch has climbed the ladder twice this week to coax it back. You hold the torch at the foot of it because your knees are better than his, and he has never once admitted he needs a hand. Down the front of the building the letters run in a single column, black serif capitals on a cream board the rain has greyed at the corners, one stacked above the next like people waiting for a bus that never comes.

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He wants the whole word lit before the Saturday crowd arrives, and the whole word is a stubborn thing. Each bulb he fixes seems to fail the one above it. By nine the dance hall is already humming through the wall, a brass section warming up badly, and you can feel the bass in the ladder's metal rungs. Harold swears at a wire, tapes it, swears again. You tell him the hall has survived worse than a dark sign. He says it has never survived a dark sign on a Saturday, and he is probably right.

At twenty past nine the top letter catches with a crackle and a soft pink buzz. Then the next. Then the one below, slower, as if it has to think about it. Harold comes down the ladder one rung at a time and stands beside you on the wet pavement, both of you tipping your heads back. The light climbs the column letter by letter and reaches the bottom just as the first couple turn the corner, laughing, shaking out their umbrella.

He doesn't say anything. He just pats your shoulder twice and goes inside to find the cash box, and you stay out in the street a minute longer, watching the sign hum above the door as if it has something left to say.