Black and grey full sleeve tattoo on an arm, shown from three angles, with roses, a pocket watch, a crown, playing cards and a skull on the upper arm and forearm.

Black and grey full sleeve with roses and pocket watch

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A full sleeve shown from three angles on a black background, with roses, a pocket watch with the word timeless, an eye, a crown, an ace of spades, dice, a skull and an hourglass. The shading is smooth and detailed, with soft smoke-like wisps and ornamental scrollwork filling the gaps between the motifs. The design is entirely black and grey ink.

Realism Traditional Upper arm Forearm Rose Pocket watch Crown Playing card Dice Skull Hourglass Eye Star Smoke Scrollwork Script

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Uncle Ray had bet the church flowers on a pair of fours, and by the time the vicar reached the vows he owed the whole reception a round. I was dealing from a shoebox of cards I'd bought off a closing pier arcade, the ace of spades bent at one corner so I always knew where it was. Nobody at a wedding looks at the deck. They look at the bride.

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The groom's mother wanted to play for her husband's pocket watch, the one with a cracked crystal and a heart scratched into the back. He had carried it since the day he came home from the Falklands and had never once checked it against anything. I told her the watch wasn't worth a stake. She said that was exactly why he'd put it on the table, because he'd been waiting thirty years for someone to take it off him.

We played in the back of the function room, the dice cup going round between hands and an hourglass on the bar that somebody kept turning over whenever the music stopped. I won the first three hands on instinct, then lost the fourth to a run of kings I should have read from the way the bride's brother kept touching his ear. When I laid down my last card, the old man slid the watch across the tablecloth and said, Time's a bad thing to be stingy with, son. Then he went off to dance with his wife, and I sat there with the watch ticking in my palm, quite sure it had stopped the moment I lost.