Black and grey realism tattoo of a skull merged with a Roman numeral clock face and an eye, with a bare tree and birds, on an upper arm.

Skull, clock and eye on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A large black and grey tattoo covers the upper arm, showing a cracked skull whose top becomes a Roman numeral clock face and whose lower half opens into a detailed eye with lashes. A bare tree, a moon, a flock of birds and a hanging rosary with a cross sit within the shaded background. Soft greys and fine stippled shading give the piece strong depth and contrast.

Realism Upper arm Skull Clock Roman numeral Eye Eyelashes Tree Bird Moon Rosary Cross

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, sit down, the soup will keep and so will the bride's father, who has been watching that clock on the wall since the vows. Did you know the clock in our church tower was made by a man who could not sleep? Old Amos Crane kept a shop on Mill Lane, and every night he sat up with a candle and the rosary his mother left him, counting beads against the tick.

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He was frightened of the hour he would die, so he built a clock that ran backwards for anyone who asked it. Folk came with their regrets. A widow wanted her husband's last Tuesday back. A boy wanted to be older by a summer. Amos took their coins and turned the hands, and a crow sat on the sill each time and watched with one black eye.

The trouble came when Hannah Vell, the girl he loved, asked for something different. She wanted nothing turned back, only forward, to the day she could marry him without her mother's ledger in the way. Amos found he could not wind the clock for himself. He took the rosary off its nail, walked the bare lane under a moon like a worn coin, and buried the key beneath the oak where the rooks roost.

So when the bells ring for this young couple, mind the hour. Hannah married him in the end, in the year the oak went bare and the birds came down the valley in their hundreds. The clock never told us anything but this: the living should be quick about their wanting. Now raise your glasses, and somebody fetch the bride's father a chair.