Black and grey lettering tattoos reading Peace will win on one thigh and Fear will lose on the other, shown on a person wearing denim shorts and a grey top.

Peace will win and fear will lose on thighs

Lettering · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows a torso cropped below the chest, wearing a grey top and frayed denim shorts, with one hand pointing towards the waistband. Two lines of serif-style lettering sit across the upper thighs, reading Peace will win on the left and Fear will lose on the right. The black ink is crisp and even, set against the monochrome tones of the photo.

Lettering Thigh Peace Fear Quote Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The corridor lights on Ward Nine dim themselves after midnight, which is the hospital's way of telling you to stop expecting anything. You push the linen trolley past the store room and find the handwriting before you find the fault. Someone has written in marker across the flap of a cardboard drip-stand box: Peace will win. Underneath, in a different pen, a second hand has added Fear will lose, as if the two of them had argued it out and agreed.

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Gloria, the night sister, is the one who explains it. She has worked nights for twenty-two years and holds her mug of tea the way other people hold a rosary. 'Mr Okafor wrote the first half,' she says. 'Bed four. Eighty-one, asked for the window that doesn't open. He said it was the only thing he knew for certain about wards.' You want to ask about the second half. She only taps the box with one finger. 'Ask him yourself. He's awake.'

At four you take the obs machine into bay four. The old man is watching the ceiling tiles as if they were a film he has seen before. He tells you he isn't frightened of dying, only of the hour before it, when the building goes quiet and everyone starts pretending the lights are fine. So you sit with him and count his breaths aloud because he asked you to, and somewhere past five the ward begins to hum with the first trolleys and the day staff's keys.

When the porter brings the tea, the box has gone from the store room and the marker is in your pocket. You write the second line on the back of your own hand, then decide to keep it there until the shift ends. Leaving the desk, you pass bay four and the window that doesn't open, and the light coming through it is the colour of weak milk.