Black Roman numeral tattoo running down a person's forearm, with a gold bangle above it and a supplement tub held in the other hand.

Roman numerals on a forearm

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

A person in grey leggings rests one hand on a white and silver supplement tub, with the forearm turned toward the camera. The Roman numerals are in black linework with solid, even fill, and the tattoo runs vertically along the outer forearm. The image is cropped tightly against a plain cream wall, with a gold bangle and the tub's blue and silver label adding the only other colour.

Lettering Forearm Roman numeral Bangle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The numerals on the lamp room door have worn so thin that you read them with your thumb, the way your father did once his eyes went milky. XXXVII. Thirty-seven steps from the landing to the gallery, and he always swore the count changed each spring when the sea shifted the stone. You never argued. You just climbed them, one hand on the rail, the paraffin smell rising to meet you.

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Fog came in off Carrick Rock on the second night of November, thick as wet wool. The fog bell was cracked and the horn had a stammer, so you wound the clockwork by hand and kept the lamp turning, logging each hour in pencil because the ink froze in the cold. Twelve fifteen. Twelve forty. At one a gull struck the glass and lay on the gallery grating with its wing folded under it, and you wrapped it in your oilskin and set it on the stove ledge, because somebody ought to be warm tonight.

At four the telegraph crackled from the mainland. The Board was sending a man in spring to fit an electric light, and the old clockwork would be crated for a museum in Aberdeen. You read the message twice. Then you took the log down, turned to the first page where your father had written the date in the Roman style he liked, and copied it out again beneath, adding the year in numerals that stood in a row like fence posts.

When the boat came for you at dawn, the glass was still turning. You did not stop it. You left the key in the drawer and wound nothing, and the lamp went on without you, counting its own flashes into the grey, the way it always had, long after anyone thought to check.