Black and grey realism tattoo of a Roman numeral clock face with visible gears, appearing to break through skin on the upper back.

3D clock face tearing through skin on a back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A three-dimensional clock face with Roman numerals and hour and minute hands is shown breaking through torn skin, with gears and a winding mechanism visible through the opening. The shading is smooth and detailed, with strong highlights and shadows that give the clock depth. The tattoo is in black and grey ink and fills the centre of the frame across the upper back.

Realism Back Clock Roman numeral Clock hand Gear Torn skin

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock came out of the wall of the stairwell on the ninth floor of Caldew Tower, behind a patch of flaking render that Ray Pollard wanted skimmed before the council inspection. I was the one with the cold chisel, so I was the one who saw the Roman numerals first, pale through the grey, and then the brass hub of the minute hand standing proud like a bolt through a door.

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Nobody in the building knew who had set it there. Mrs Okafor on six thought it belonged to the Hallidays, who had gone to Leeds in the nineties. Ray wanted it in the skip with the lino. I wrapped it in an old bedsheet and carried it up to the flat I had been keeping empty since my dad died, because I could not stand the sound of it hitting the bin. Its hands had stopped at twenty to four. Inside the back panel, a gear the size of a biscuit tin still had a winding key, and the teeth were furred with dust but whole.

On Sunday I oiled the gears with the sewing machine oil from Dad's cupboard and wound it slowly, a quarter turn at a time, listening for the tick. Nothing for an hour. Then the escapement caught and the big hand jumped forward one notch, as if it had been waiting for permission to be late.

I hung it on the nail by the door, face out, where the light from the landing came through the broken pane. Ray knocked at seven to ask about the chisel. He stood in the doorway a long time, reading the numerals, and then he said the lobby clock had only ever been wrong about the hour. I didn't ask what he meant. The second hand went round, and I let it.