Black and grey realism tattoo of a pocket watch, skull and roses on the side of the ribs, with a butterfly and swirling ornament.

Pocket watch, skull and roses on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large tattoo on the side of the torso shows a pocket watch with Roman numerals in front of a skull, flanked by two roses and a monarch butterfly. Clock gears, leaves and ornamental swirls fill the surrounding space, and the shading is soft and detailed. The piece is rendered entirely in black ink and grey tones on a dim background.

Realism Ribs Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Skull Rose Butterfly Gear Leaves Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The brass pocket watch stopped every night at the bottom lock, and Nan Hollis swore it was the canal's doing and not her own winding. Her husband Tom had carried it aboard the Mercy, a narrowboat with red and white roses painted round the cabin doors, and when he slipped off the gunwale below Stoke Hill, the watch was the only thing the boathook brought back up.

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She worked the boat alone after that, with a windlass on her belt and an old brindle dog called Sixpence trotting the towpath ahead of her. Each dusk the watch ran down at the same place, a little after the lamp was lit on the far bank, and each morning she wound it and it started again. A ram's skull sat on the cabin shelf to keep the papers down, and one June a monarch butterfly came through the hatch and settled on the rim of the watch as if it had been sent to read the time for her.

One night the watch stopped and she did not wind it. She walked up to the lock gates, where the water ran black and the old sluice gears ticked in the reeds, and she counted the Roman numerals aloud, one stroke for each, until the twelfth. Somewhere below her the paddles lifted without anyone touching them, and the level dropped, and the Mercy settled gently onto the silt where Tom's boots had gone down.

She wound the watch at last, set it to the hour he went over the side, and dropped it through the hatch into the deep green water. It sank face up, the hands still moving. The next dusk the bottom lock ran on time, and Nan slept through the lamp for the first time in a year, with a fresh red rose drying on the cabin door.