Black script lettering reading I solemnly swear that I am up to no good, with dark footprints, tattooed across a person's upper back near the shoulder blade.

Quote and footprints across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows the phrase I solemnly swear that I am up to no good in a flowing cursive script, with a trail of dark shoe prints running above and below the lettering. The linework is fine and even, and the ink is a single dark tone with no shading or colour. The photograph is taken from behind, close up, with the tattoo centred on bare skin and a long strand of dark hair at the right edge.

Lettering Fine line Back Quote Script Footprint Handwriting Text

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Ruby's idea was the footprints, and Tomasz only agreed because the alternative was the glue. "Shoe polish, not paint," she said on the eleventh-floor landing, pressing her trainer into a tin lid. "Paint's evidence. Polish just rubs off on your sleeve." She set the print on the concrete heel first, then the toes, then did it again ten steps along, the way Mr Gallagher's dog walked when it wanted to be left alone.

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They went up the stairwell in pairs of prints, a bit wonky, past the noticeboard where the council had pinned a notice saying the lifts were out until Thursday. Tomasz kept watch with the torch, and every time a door opened somewhere below he froze with one foot in the air, half expecting Mrs Pryce to come out in her dressing gown and ask why a thirteen-year-old was walking up her wall. Nobody came. The prints climbed to the fourteenth floor and turned at the roof hatch, which had been propped open since August.

On the roof the wind carried the smell of chips from the car park, and the whole estate lay under orange streetlight like something spilt. Ruby stopped at the edge with her tin, ready to make a grand final print, and found Mr Okafor already sitting there on an upturned bucket with a flask between his boots. He had clearly been watching the whole way up.

"Mind the edge," he said. "And next time, use the far stairs. Less echo." He unscrewed the flask, poured tea into its lid, and held it out to Tomasz, who took it because his hands had nowhere else to go. Behind them, the last print sat on the roof's grey felt, pointing straight at the old man's boots.