Small black outline tattoo of a light switch marked ON and OFF, placed behind the ear on the neck.

Light switch tattoo behind the ear

Neck · Black and grey · Photo

The photograph shows the back of a head and ear, with a small tattoo of a light switch behind the ear. The switch is drawn in black outline with a plain rectangular plate, and the words ON and OFF sit above and below it. The plain white background keeps the close composition focused on the tattoo.

Neck

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Okafor in bay four always wanted the lamp off before the corridor lights dimmed, and I always forgot. At ten past three I was on my knees by the sluice, counting saline bags, when the buzzer went and I stood up too fast and cracked my head on the trolley shelf. Nothing serious. Sister Dunne laughed at me from the desk and said I'd be finding stars by morning.

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The ward at night has its own switches. There's the big panel by the lift that Facilities tell us never to touch, and the little brass toggle above each bed that only works if the patient remembers which way is which. Most of them never do. They press it, the room goes dark, then they press it again and it goes dark again because they've pushed the wrong way round. I used to think the trick was patience. Then I met Mr Adeyemi, who had driven a bus for forty years and knew exactly how a circuit ought to behave, and he taught me to label the thing on the wall with a strip of tape so the word at each end could never lie.

When I finally clocked off, the sky over the car park had gone the colour of weak tea. I stood at the lift and watched the numbers climb, and I thought about how simple it all was: one way for light, the other for dark, and somebody on the night shift in the middle deciding which the room needed. I flicked the panel by the doors on my way out. Behind me, bay four stayed lit for the first time all week, because Mrs Okafor had finally asked me to leave it on.