Black and grey script lettering runs down a man's side over the ribs, while another man's arm shows a realistic skull sleeve from upper arm to forearm.

Script on ribs and skull sleeve on arm

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

Two shirtless men stand close together, with their faces cropped out of frame. A black script lettering piece runs vertically down one man's side over the ribs, and the other man has a black and grey sleeve featuring a skull, a horned demonic face and flame-like shading. The sepia-toned photo has soft lighting against a plain light background, and the tattoos are the main focus.

Lettering Realism Ribs Upper arm Forearm Script Lettering Skull Demon Flame Sleeve Hand Jeans

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz,

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The ovens were already ticking when I let myself in this morning, and the flour sacks were stacked exactly where you left them, as if you had only gone out for a smoke. I have the brass key now. Mrs Okafor says I can keep the Saturday shift if I stop burning the tray bottoms, and I have, mostly. Bread goes out at half four, before the milk van, and the windows fog from the inside so the street cannot see us working.

I found your old notebook under the proving drawer. Most of it is recipes for bloomers in your square capitals, but on the back page you had drawn a skull with a horned face behind it, flames curling off its brow like hair. Under it you had written the same line over and over, the words you used to chant when the dough would not rise: battles, strong, soldier, stand. I asked Mr Pellow about the drawing and he laughed and said the forge man cast a devil into the oven door in 1952, and as long as the iron stayed hot the devil would keep the flour mites and the bailiffs away.

So I have kept it hot. I have not opened that door once without thinking of you.

I left the last loaf on the sill by the window, scored with the letters you taught me. It is still cooling. Come and get it before the milk van, and bring the notebook back, because I have started a new recipe on the blank pages and I need your handwriting on it.

Evie