Script quote on a forearm
Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo
A forearm is shown from the wrist towards the elbow, with the words Death will get us Alive written in flowing black script across the skin. The letters are solid black with soft grey shading, and the lettering runs diagonally, rising slightly towards the elbow. A black cord bracelet sits at the wrist and a dark sleeve covers the upper arm against a plain, softly blurred grey background.
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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction
The ferry is late again, and Mrs Pryce has already decided it is your fault for wanting to leave. You stand on the slipway with your father's sea chest at your feet while the gulls work the tideline and the Harrow light turns its slow white arm across the water.
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Your father never said the words aloud, not at first. He painted them across the inside of the boathouse door in letters that leaned like the wind was pushing them, and when the February gales came in he would rap the wood with one knuckle and say, Death will get us, Nell, but he'll have to queue behind the gulls. You thought it was a joke. You were nine, and you laughed, and he looked pleased that you had understood him so well.
The ferry comes at last, its horn flat and apologetic. Mrs Pryce hands you a parcel in brown paper before you climb the ramp. Inside is a strip of the old door, planed and oiled, the lettering still dark and sharp at the edges. Good timber, she says. He'd want it going somewhere with a lot of weather.
You board with the plank under your arm. Behind you the island shrinks to a grey smudge under the light, and you find yourself saying the words to the spray, testing them the way he did, and for the first time they sound less like a warning than a dare.
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