Black script tattoo reading Thug Life on the back of a hand, with a grey floral outline near the wrist, in a lettering style.

Thug Life script on the back of a hand

Lettering · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A close photograph of the back of a hand with pink painted nails, rings and a gold bracelet. The words Thug Life are written in black script lettering across the hand, with a grey outline of a flower or bow near the wrist. The tattoos are in black and grey ink, set against warm skin tones and a dark background.

Lettering Hand Script Flower

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The boats came in on the top of the tide, and by the time the gulls had finished arguing over the offcuts, Tam Pryor was sitting on an upturned creel at the end of the quay, turning his left hand over in the light. Nobody on Skelder asked him what the black letters said. They could read the loops from the slipway, and they remembered the spring the Marigold went down off the Fenn bank, when Tam came ashore alone with his wrist bound in sailcloth.

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His granddaughter Mags asked him once, when she was eleven and sulking over a bucket of crabs. She wanted to know whether the words were a boat's name or a saint's. Tam told her they were the last thing Dennis Cole had chalked on the galley slate, the night before the squall, when the cook had burnt the porridge again. Then he said that was not quite true, and that the grey bell by his wrist was sea thrift, the flower the women picked on the cliff path every June, drawn grey because Dennis had never liked pink.

Mags did not believe the slate story, and she was right not to. Years later, clearing the loft, she found the real slate under a tarpaulin, the chalk gone soft. Dennis had written nothing funny at all. He had listed the wives' names, one under another, with a small mark beside each where a child had been born in the months he was at sea. Tam had never been able to say that out loud, so he had said the joke instead.

She carried the slate down and set it on the creel where he sat. He read it once, touched the grey bell at his wrist, and said nothing. The tide turned under the quay, and the first boat of the morning came round the wall with its engine low.