Black lettering tattoo of a quotation in a serif typeface running diagonally along the inner forearm.

Serif quote along a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A photograph of a quotation tattooed in black serif lettering across the inner forearm, reading "Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row." The letters are solid and even, with a slightly grey-blue cast in places from the ink and skin tone. The arm fills the frame diagonally against a dark wooden surface and a pale paper or card in the background.

Lettering Forearm Quote Text Word Serif lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The school hall still smelled of floor polish and wet coats, and the draughts board was still on the shelf above the radiator where Mr Hollis had left it in 1989. Dennis wiped the dust off with his sleeve. Twenty-four pieces, the red ones chipped at the rims, and a few kings with their crowns rubbed down to bare plastic by years of thumbs. Nobody had asked him to bring it. He had carried it through the reunion crowd anyway, like a man carrying a lantern into a room that already had the lights on.

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Marion came over at half past nine with her cardigan buttoned wrong and a glass of squash she did not drink. She sat down opposite him without asking, the way she used to at the back of the bus. 'You still take the long way round,' she said, watching him set out the pieces. 'Lost more games than you won because of it.'

'Then let's see if I've learned anything.'

They played while the others sang badly in the corner. She gave up men freely, one after another, until he had three kings and she had none that had gone forward. Then she leaned back and said, 'Ask me that question again, the one you never finished in Year Nine.' He had forgotten how it went. She had not. 'Still keep my kings in the back row,' she said. 'A king that leads gets taken.' She moved her last man forward into his trap.

He saw it too late, the way he always had. Three of his kings went off the board before he finished counting, and the one left standing was the one he had meant to keep safe. Marion swept the pieces into the box with the side of her hand and laughed, a sound nobody else in the hall heard over the singing. Then she reset the board for a rematch and placed her own kings on the back row, one by one, without looking up.