Black and grey pencil drawing of a tattoo design showing a pocket watch on a scroll banner, an hourglass with chain, roses and a Holy Bible banner, in a realistic style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch, hourglass and roses sketch

Realism · Black and grey · Flash

The drawing shows a pocket watch with Roman numerals on a curled scroll banner, an hourglass hung with chain links, and clusters of roses at the lower left and right. Fine pencil hatching and soft shading give the watch, hourglass and roses depth, and the banners carry lettering that is part of the design. The image is entirely greyscale on a pale background and is framed diagonally across the page.

Realism Pocket watch Hourglass Rose Chain Roman numeral Clock

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The clock at Stennor stopped on a Tuesday in March, at a quarter to four, and Halder Pike was the only man in the village who would climb the tower to see why. He took his pocket watch with him, the silver one his father had carried down the pit, and held it up beside the great face. They agreed to the second. Whatever had stopped the clock was not in the works.

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Up in the belfry he found an hourglass lying on the boards, its sand gone to grey dust, with a paper rose pinned beneath it. Nobody in Stennor owned an hourglass. Halder turned it over and the sand did not fall, which frightened him more than the silence. Under the rose was a slip of paper in his sister's hand: Bring the Bible to the vestry, Halder. You know the page.

The vestry was where the parish registers sat in a biscuit tin. He found the family Bible open at Ecclesiastes, where someone had underlined the line about a time for every purpose under heaven. Beside it lay his sister's watch, which she had sworn was lost in 1931. Its hands read a quarter to four. When he wound it, the second hand moved, and far above him the clock gave one deep stroke that rolled across the fields like a dropped tray.

Halder carried the hourglass home and set it in the kitchen window where the light came through. He turned it once and watched the first grains slide down, slow as a parish meeting. Then he put the watch back in his waistcoat and went to bed. In the morning the clock in the tower was running, the sand lay level, and a red rose had opened on the sill overnight.