Black fine script lettering reading Riddikulus with a small wand motif, tattooed on the inner forearm.

Riddikulus script on forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a black script word, Riddikulus, written across the inner forearm with an exclamation mark and a small wand-like flourish at the start. The linework is smooth and even with solid black ink and no shading. The warm, vignetted photo shows a sleeve or fabric edge at the bottom, with the rest of the composition kept soft.

Lettering Forearm Script Wand Lettering Word

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The officer at the Vellmark crossing waves you towards the lorry's back doors, and you climb up because the paperwork is in order and the rain has found the gap under your collar. Between pallets of tinned peaches, a tarpaulin shifts. Something beneath it is breathing in the wrong rhythm, quick and shallow, like a sleeper dreaming of falling.

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Your grandmother taught you the word the summer the wardrobe in the spare room began opening by itself. She made you say it at the kitchen table, flicking a pencil like a wand, until you heard how absurd it sounded. Riddikulus. Mean it, she said, and whatever frightens you has to become something that cannot help but make you laugh. She never explained where the charm came from. She only said it worked best when the person saying it had stopped minding how foolish they looked.

You pull back the tarpaulin. Crouched inside is a shape as tall as a man, all elbows and hooked fingers. You flick your wrist and say it, loud and deliberately silly. The shape sneezes, shrinks, and a sodden poodle sits up among the tins, looking deeply offended.

Behind you the officer is laughing so hard he has to lean on the door frame. He stamps your form without reading it twice. "Take him on," he says, wiping his eyes. "Nobody else on this road will want him." You drive off with the poodle on the passenger seat, and the word still tastes ridiculous in your mouth, which is exactly why it works.