Black line tattoo of an oval clock face with Roman numerals and a cobweb pattern, with tiny figures on the hands, on the side of the ribs.

Clock face with small figures on the ribs

Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A large oval clock face with Roman numerals, a brick-patterned outer border and a fine web pattern across the dial, tattooed along the side of the ribs. The hands are solid black, and a row of small standing figures sits on the minute hand, with a few touches of green and blue in their clothing. Most of the linework and numerals are black, with the small coloured accents adding a limited palette.

Ribs Clock Roman numeral Clock hand Figure

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hospice clock on the Col Varin had not kept true since my grandmother was a girl. Brother Anselm let the cobwebs stay on the dial on purpose, he said, because a clock the spiders would tend had decided to stay put. I was nineteen and carrying a ledger for Mr Harrow, and I thought the old man was joking until the storm shut the road behind us at four in the afternoon.

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Mr Harrow walked the rim of the dial as though it were a pavement, one hand clamped to his tall hat. Ottilie in her blue dress would not step onto the ice without holding my sleeve, and Tobin, who had lifted a pocket watch in Brig and wanted to return it before dark, kept counting the Roman numerals under his breath. We reached the long black minute hand where the brass was still warm from the stove below, and it seemed the only sensible road left. We sat along its length with our backs to the glass and our boots over the brick.

Brother Anselm found us there at first light, asleep in a row. 'The hand only moves for those willing to be carried,' he said, and wound the key. The hours went round beneath us in a slow, patient clatter, and the snow thinned to nothing.

Tobin set his watch by the bell and handed it over without a word. Mr Harrow said the ledger was nothing but lies. Ottilie let go of my sleeve. The last thing I remember is the green of Tobin's coat catching the sun on the pass, and the hand pausing, quite politely, a hair short of the hour.