Black and grey dotwork tattoo on the inner forearm showing a bald head with closed eyes held by a hand, with a second hand pinching a small object above it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Hands holding a bald head on a forearm

Dotwork · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A tattoo of a bald head with closed eyes, cradled by a hand rising from the bottom of the design, with a second hand at the top pinching a small object. The head is shaded with fine stippled dots and the hands use bold outlines with dotted and hatched shading. The design is in black ink on pale skin against a plain light background and dark clothing.

Dotwork Traditional Forearm Hand Head Face

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The key was no bigger than a barley grain, and Tobias had to hold it up to the gaslight twice before he trusted his fingers to it. Above the workbench the bald wooden head sat in its cradle of carved hands, eyes shut as they had been since Mr Aske died in March, a thin seam running across its crown where the mechanism met the skull.

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Mrs Aske wanted it wound on Sundays. She had said so in the shop doorway with her coat still buttoned, as if she were giving instructions for a cat. 'He liked to hear it breathe,' she said, and then she went back out into the rain before Tobias could ask what she meant by breathe.

He dropped the key into the slot. It seated with a click that rang up through the bench into his wrists, and the gears inside began to tick, slow and patient, the way a man counts stairs in the dark. The head did not open its eyes. Its lips shifted a fraction, the old varnish cracking along the jaw, and the room filled with the smell of machine oil and pressed flowers.

He wound it until his thumb ached, then sat on the stool to wait for something to happen. Nothing did. At closing he turned the lamp down and heard, from the bench, one soft tick followed by a second, as though somebody under the wood were still keeping time for him, and he left the key where it lay.