Black and grey realism tattoo of a lion's face merged with a Roman numeral clock, placed across the upper back over the shoulder blade.

Lion and clock on a shoulder blade

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A lion's face is shown in shaded greyscale linework, with its mane fading into dark brushed and splattered black ink on the left. A clock face with Roman numerals and ornate hands overlaps the lion on the right, with the numerals curving around the shoulder. The tattoo is in black ink and greys on bare skin, photographed from behind with a dark background.

Realism Back Lion Clock Roman numeral Clock hand Brushstroke Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The hall clock at Brackwater House stopped at twenty to four the week the sign-painter came, and Mrs Pellow would not let me touch it until he had finished the lion. She wanted it over the stairwell, where the plaster bowed and the damp bloomed brown in the corners. Tobias Renn worked from a stepladder with a jam jar of black ink thinned with turpentine, and whenever the sea wind rattled the sash he flicked his brush in temper and spattered the landing like a wet dog shaking off the harbour.

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He drew the numerals first, curving them round the bulge of the wall so the twelve sat on the shoulder of the staircase and the one came down almost to the banister. The lion came after. He gave it a mane that dissolved into smoke at the edges, as though the animal were walking out of a fog bank, and he painted its eye so it looked straight down the hall at the clock's dead hands. Mrs Pellow said it was the only thing in the house that had ever kept proper watch.

On Sunday mornings I wound the clock while the guests were still at breakfast, and I told myself the lion had nothing to do with it. But on the night before Tobias left for the train, I found the minute hand had crept on by itself. I stood on the third stair with the lamp, looking up, until the brushstrokes seemed to shift like weather over the wall. In the morning there were black flecks on my cuffs that would not wash out, and the clock was running, and the lion's eye had moved to the front door.