Black and grey realism tattoo of an ornate pocket watch with Roman numerals and exposed gears on an upper arm.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Pocket watch with gears and Roman numerals

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large pocket watch dial with Roman numerals and beaded edging fills the centre of the arm, with the case cut away to show interlocking gears and a hand. Ornate scrollwork and shaded drapery wrap around the left side, and dark shadowing blends into the skin at the top right. The work uses smooth greyscale shading and high contrast, with no colour ink.

Realism Upper arm Pocket watch Clock Roman numeral Gear Scrollwork Ornament

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mind the third stair, it gives under anyone with a guilty conscience. Sit by the range, Mrs Pring will bring the tea when she has finished arguing with the kettle. That clock you hear through the parlour door belonged to Josiah Ferrow, who kept this house at Gullhaven for forty-one winters and never once let a lodger see the inside of his watch.

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It was a silver hunter with Roman numerals he had cut himself and a beaded rim he polished each Sunday. He wound it at eleven every night before bolting the front door. The back was cut away so the gears showed, for he said a house runs on its works like a watch, and the works must stay out of sight. In the great storm of 1907 a man called Abel Renshaw came off the Caister boat soaked to the bone and asked for a room with no window. Josiah gave him the attic. Each night after that Renshaw stood at the foot of the stairs, listening to the ticking.

Renshaw told him once that the watch had stopped the hour his brother drowned, and that he would pay any sum to have it. Josiah said no, and put the watch back on its hook above the coat pegs. The next morning the hook was bare. The hall clock had stopped at a quarter past two, and on the attic sill lay a single brass gear, oiled and bright, its teeth worn into the shape of a key that opened nothing anyone had ever found.

Josiah climbed to the attic with a lamp. The bed was made tight as a drum, the window stood open on the harbour, and Renshaw was gone for good. Under the pillow lay the watch's back plate, with a line scratched across the gears: he has the hour, I have the rest. Mrs Pring says it is a sorry tale and I should leave it be. I say come back at eleven and stand very still at the foot of the stairs, and you will hear it going.