Black and grey back tattoo showing Snow White holding a poisoned apple, Alice with a pocket watch and Jack Skellington, with roses and music notes, beside a colour sleeve on the upper arm.

Disney-themed back piece with Snow White and Alice

Back · Mixed · Photo

A large back piece shows Snow White holding a skull-like apple, Alice beside a pocket watch, and a grinning skeletal figure, with a rose, music notes, smoke-like shading and a tribal band at the base. The main design is in black and grey with smooth shading and soft highlights, while a separate colour tattoo of roses sits on the upper arm at the left edge. The composition runs vertically down the spine, with the figures stacked and framed by the tattoo's swirling background.

Back Upper arm Apple Alice Pocket watch Clock Jack skellington Rose Music note Tribal Playing card Ghost Skull

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You are the last clockmaker left aboard the Hollin, and the courier who climbs up from the lower decks swears the pocket watch in his tin has been running backwards since the last spin of the sails. You doubt it. Nothing runs backwards on Deck Nine. Still, you open the case, lift the brass movement under your loupe, and find the hands turning the wrong way, steady as a pulse.

Keep reading

Inside the lid someone has scratched a girl in a pinafore tumbling past a hare with a pocket watch. Beneath her is a rhyme in a looping hand you half recognise. It is your grandmother's, though she died before the hydroponic orchards were planted. Her rhymes always ended with a warning about apples. You remember her at the seed vault, peeling one with a folding knife and holding the red skin up to the lamp. Nothing sweet keeps, she used to say, and then she would eat the core herself.

The courier's manifest lists one more item, a sealed jar from the cold store holding an apple gone the colour of a bruise. The crew call it the Snow apple, because nobody has eaten one in a generation. You set it beside the watch, and the ticking slows, then stops. Somewhere above the hull, in the rattle of the water pumps, a thin tune starts up like a hymn sung by something without lips.

You wind the watch forward by one tooth. The hands jump and begin again, true this time. The courier asks what the damage is. You tell him the watch was never broken, only waiting for someone to read it honestly. Then you turn the apple so its dark side faces the lamp and set it back on the bench, where it can keep the hour for you.