Black and grey lettering reading DON'T LAUGH with a small downward arrow, tattooed on the lower abdomen above a black waistband, with larger black and grey tattoos higher up the torso.

Small Don't Laugh lettering on the lower belly

Lettering · Other · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the lower abdomen showing the words DON'T LAUGH in small, bold black capitals that curve slightly, with a short downward arrow beneath them. Larger black and grey tattoos of a grotesque face and creature outlines sit higher on the torso, rendered with solid black shading and grey tones. The ink is black and grey only, and the framing centres the small text just above a black waistband held by two hands.

Lettering Other Phrase Arrow Lettering Creature Torso

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The posters have been rained on since Easter, so the gorgon's face on the big banner has run into a grin nobody drew, and the two-headed calf beside it has lost one head entirely. You are the one who gets the ladder out each morning in Spalding, the one Mrs Ferrier calls when something needs fixing before the crowds arrive. This morning she wants a sign for the ring, and she wants it short.

Keep reading

"Three words," she says, holding out a tin of black paint. "And an arrow. People read a thing like that and they look where it points." You letter it on a scrap of board, the capitals bold and slightly bowed the way the old Pilcher hand used to paint them, and you aim the arrow at the sawdust just inside the flap, where Mr Ossory has been falling over his own feet for thirty years. Nobody laughs at Mr Ossory now. They wait for him to get up, and that is worse.

The first show with the sign up is thin. A dozen children, two farmers who came for the cattle ring and stayed for the warmth, and a boy who sits so close to the sawdust he could touch it. When Ossory takes his tumble the boy does not laugh. He looks up at the board, reads it twice, then looks at you, standing by the flap with the tin still in your hand, and you realise the arrow was never pointing at the clown.

It points at the floor where you have been standing all season, pretending the tent is still full.