Black and grey line drawing of a skeletal hand raising a gavel above cannabis leaves and small flowers, with the word LIBRA and the caption justice: just us beneath, shown as a tattoo design rather

Skeletal hand holding a gavel with cannabis leaves

Black and grey · Flash

A black and grey illustration of a skeleton hand gripping the handle of a wooden gavel, rising from a cluster of cannabis leaves and small blossoms. The linework is ink-style with cross-hatched shading on the bones, leaves and gavel head, and small stipple dots scattered around the hand. The word LIBRA sits in serif capitals below the artwork, with the phrase justice: just us. in smaller italic type beneath it.

Skeleton hand Flower Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are sweeping sawdust behind the rifle range when the Clerk calls you to the tent, and by the time you have wiped your hands on your jeans he has already set the gavel on its block. Its head is worn pale where a hundred palms have gripped it. Beside it, in a jam jar, a dried sprig of hemp leans over a tin of lucifers. Nobody on this ground has ever been tried by a jury. The Clerk keeps the scales on the weighing stall, the hook-a-duck pond and the cash box, and he has decided you owe the stallholder four pounds for a pair of gloves that were never yours.

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"Justice," he says, "is what the ground says it is. You've seen the board." He taps the painted sign above the tent flap: justice: just us. You have always taken it for a joke the fair told itself. Now it sounds like a rule.

You argue. You tell him about the night the wind took the tarpaulin down, how you held the guy ropes while the others ran for the lorry, and he nods as though you have made his point for him. Then the gavel comes down, flat and final on the block, and the sound rolls out over the dodgems and the candyfloss and the generator's hum, and nobody looks up.

Afterwards, when the lights are doused and the rides ticking as they cool, you come back alone. The gavel is still warm from nobody's hand. You pick it up, feel the heft of the wood, and find yourself listening for the next set of boots on the boards, already weighing the small fine you will hand down to whoever is least able to pay it.