Black and grey realism tattoo on the thigh showing a veiled woman among clock gears and a Roman numeral clock face.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Clockwork woman and gears on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A large tattoo on the outer thigh shows a woman with a veiled or smoky head, one hand raised near her face, set within a clock face with Roman numerals. Gears and cogs spread across the lower left, and wispy, flowing lines of smoke or fabric wrap around the figure. The work is shaded in black and grey with smooth tonal gradients and fine detail, and the composition fills the whole limb.

Realism Thigh Clock Gear Roman numeral Woman Veil Hand Smoke Cog

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, love, the kettle's only just gone on, and you'll not hear the clock over it, which is a mercy. The old clock above the nurses' station at St Aldred's had Roman numerals as big as my hand, and every one of them was loud. Nobody tells you that. You learn it on nights, when the corridors go grey and the only things moving are the tea trolley and that clock, and the clock is never wrong about the hour, only about how long the hour takes.

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Sister Hale had a theory that the woman in the veil came up through the boiler house at ten to three, when the gears in the old lift machinery caught and ground. She'd seen her, she said, in the window glass of the day room: a face half hidden, one hand raised as if to hold back smoke. I told her the smoke was steam off the laundry. Sister Hale said steam doesn't know which way to go. That was the difference between us.

One February night the clock stopped at twelve, the hands sitting on the two like a pair of folded arms. Nobody could reach the mechanism without a ladder and a fuss, so I climbed up with the oil can and a torch in my teeth. Behind the glass the brass wheels were turning slowly, the way a thought turns over before you say it. The cogs were full of fine grey threads, as if something had been living in them and had only just left.

I oiled the teeth, wound the key, and the minute hand went round to the one. Down below, the day room light clicked on by itself. Sister Hale was standing under it with her hand up at her face, laughing, and she said the veil was only gauze from the dressings trolley. I believed her, mostly. I still check the clock when I come on, and it still tells the right time, and I still do not look at the window glass.