Black and grey realism tattoo of a light switch in the On position, placed behind a person's ear on the neck.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Light switch set to on behind the ear

Realism · Neck · Black and grey · Photo

A close-up photograph of a tattoo of a wall light switch in the On position, with the word ON printed on the lower plate. The switch is rendered with soft shading and a raised, three-dimensional look, using greys and black. The ear sits in the upper right of the frame and the background is out of focus.

Realism Neck

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The switch on the wheelhouse wall of the Dora Lind has been set to ON for as long as anyone aboard can remember, and your father will not let anyone touch it. It is a toggle the colour of old piano keys, screwed into planking painted so many times that its edges have gone soft. The barge carries coal up the Trent and back, and the only lamp that needs it is the masthead light, which your father says the lock-keepers watch for in the dark the way a sailor watches for a lighthouse.

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The summer you turn twelve, the fog comes down at Keadby and does not lift. Your father is below with a fever, shouting for tea he cannot keep down, and the tow is stalled in the channel with the gates somewhere ahead. You have heard him tell the story a dozen times: how the keeper at Thorne Cut once lost a whole string of boats because someone switched the light off to save the battery. Your hand is on the wall before you have decided anything. The plate is cool, the letters printed on it are worn to a grey ghost, and the switch sits where it always sits.

You leave it on. You stand in the wheelhouse with your palm flat against the wood and wait for the answer. Some time later, across the black water, a small yellow light blinks at the gates, then steadies, then a second one comes on beyond it, and a third far off on the bank, all of them answering the Dora Lind's light the way you were told they would.