Black and grey realism tattoo on an upper arm and shoulder, showing a star with peeled skin edges revealing words such as freedom, love and family, with a faint leaf sprig at the top left.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Torn skin star with words on shoulder

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A star sits on the upper arm and shoulder, with its edges drawn as peeled, torn skin that reveals a band of printed-style words including FRIENDSHIP, FREEDOM, FAMILY, LOVE, TOLERANCE and INTEGRITY, some cut off at the edges. The shading is smooth and detailed, with lifted skin textures and creases creating depth, and a faint botanical sprig appears at the upper left. The image is in black and grey, with the wearer's white vest and a plain background framing the arm.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Star Torn skin Word Freedom Love Family Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last job before the Carrick Street works closed was a star. Mr Abbott wanted two hundred sheets of it, a five-pointed shape printed in black on cheap grey stock, with the words set in old Caslon in rows that ran off the edges so that nothing read whole. Nadia asked him why. He said the client had asked for it that way, and that the client had paid in cash.

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She fed the sheets through the Heidelberg after midnight, when the street outside had gone quiet except for the buses grinding along the ring road. FRIENDSHIP came up first, then FREEDOM, FAMILY, LOVE, each word inked a little heavier than the last because the rollers were still warming. TOLERANCE slid out with its final letters clipped by the chase. She stacked them face down on the bench, and the ink smelled of linseed and something sweetish, like pear drops.

Near three she found one that had jammed and crumpled at the corner, the upper point of the star torn away so the paper curled back like peeled skin. She smoothed it flat with the side of her hand. INTEGRITY was half gone. Mr Abbott had run this press for forty years and never once let a sheet leave the building with its edges unfinished, and she wondered who the client was, and whether they had wanted the tearing or only the words.

She kept the spoilt sheet. In the morning Mr Abbott found it folded in her coat pocket and said nothing about it. When the lights went off for the last time, she slid it behind the cabinet of loose type, where the words could go on sitting in the dark, read by nobody at all.