u/Ikepat14 — reddlx

I always hated clocks. Whenever we would stay with my grandma growing up, as the youngest of four siblings, I had to sleep out in the living room, on the rickety pull out couch. She had this huge grandfather clock that was admittedly beautiful. I never really noticed its constant, insistent ticking during the day. Only in the late hours of the night. When I was alone. The house, silent, undisturbed.

Tick.

It would eagerly pierce its way into my brain. Synchronising itself with my heartbeat in an agonizingly horrible chorus. I couldn’t help but feel small. The unending flow of time counting down the time I have left among the living.

In my delirium I would catch glimpses of things that even now I can’t fully explain. A desert void of light. Cities long abandoned. Strange hulking creatures silhouetted on the horizon. Despite the complete lack of any light, they were there, I could almost make out their features. My mind swirled with different emotions and desires as I felt them gaze back at me. I could not see their eyes. Yet there in that moment I knew they saw me. I wanted to run to them, like a lost child running towards a mothers embrace. I also felt as if I knew I shouldn't be seeing at all, that my eyes might melt right out of my head like they were custard from a doughnut. Whatever strange hallucination I was in, it faded almost as quickly as it arrived. The ticking resumed, though it somehow had more weight. Like it somehow knew what I saw in that brief moment.

Tick.

It would batter me, keep me awake through all hours. If I closed my eyes it would grow louder, as if it was demanding my attention. I'd always greet my family the next day with bloodshot eyes. Dried from a great effort to keep them open. Ashamed to admit my fear I would lie and say I slept fine. My parents decided instead that it was perhaps a mild allergy to my grandmother's egregiously rotund tabby cat.

After that visit, I would always try to find ways to avoid visiting my grandmother. Sometimes acting out in school in the hopes that I would be forced to remain home. Instead I was taken to see doctors and behavioral psychologists, my parents understandably were worried about my sudden change in behavior. It was then that I received a laundry list of diagnoses. For a reason I could not explain, I couldn’t bring myself to tell them the truth. The terror I felt laying in that room. The feeling like I was perceiving something I shouldn’t. It would corner me at my most vulnerable. Trying to force me into submission. To allow the flow of time to sweep me up in its current and guide me to its destination in infinity. It couldn’t bring myself to share the burden, the knowledge of time. Its motivations are unknowable. An unrelenting force of forward motion.

Years passed and as my siblings aged and moved on with their lives. I no longer had to stay in that room. The ticking followed me anyways. It followed me home, at school, everywhere I went I could hear it. Usually faint. Never like it was in that room. Yet, still there. An ancient companion. Taking great care to remind me of my impending doom. To surrender. To stop fighting the current and allow myself to be a leaf upon the great river.

Now as an adult, I have to take pills to sleep. I often dream of the clock. Standing at incomprehensible heights. Towering over me. In my dreams I'm nothing but an insect. Barely enough to cause a change in the current. Insignificant. Sometimes… according to my wife, I would repeat a phrase almost in a panic

Tick.

My Grandmother died today. She was a hundred and two. I often joked that she continued to live out of spite. Not towards us but the fates themselves. She was a stubborn woman, and would damn well go when SHE felt like it.
I met my family at her home. She had spent most of her life in that home, the air was heavy when I stepped through the door. My parents, siblings, cousins and nephews drank and reminisced about times we shared. Still, even from the other room, I could hear the grandfather clock still ticking away.

Tick.

Unable to ignore it I abruptly stood up and said apologetic goodbyes. Something about how I wasn’t feeling well. I told them that I would see them all at the hotel in the morning. No one wanted to stay in her house. Not when she’d died in her bed just days earlier.
My hands were shaking as I got into my car. I fumbled with the key trying desperately to get away from the horrible sound. Nausea swelled inside of me as I choked back tears.

Tick.

It wasn’t quiet anymore, it was coming from inside my head. Drowning out all other thoughts, until my brain was rattling from the sheer force of the noise.

Tick.

I groaned in pain and wept. In the driveway of my grandmother's home. Years after the first night alone with that fucking clock. I wept. I felt myself giving up. I couldn’t bring myself to fight it anymore. It wormed its way into my head and down through my body. I heaved and vomited but the sensation was barely noticeable. Suddenly compelled, I exited the vehicle. MY flesh being piloted by some unseen force while I remained. In the deep corners of my mind. Cowering in fear. I accepted my insanity easily. I understood that the ticking would never cease. That time would continue to soldier on with or without me. Unlike the others, the people in my life. That I have grown to know. They cannot feel it. The flow. The rhythm of sentience, of perception.

Tick.

My body moved now of its own accord, gracefully still allowing me to see through my own eyes as I turned the handle. I saw my family look at me concerned as I walked briskly past them. I heard muffled shouts as I pushed through a nephew. The ticking crescendoed. An ancient chorus, of the chosen few. Horrible and sad. It guided me.

Tick.

I stopped in front of the grandfather clock. Its golden pendulum no longer swinging. I wasn’t sure if it ever had. I fell to my knees before it. Its ballad urging me closer.

Tick.

I was back there again, in that lightless desert, the large silhouetted creatures looming in the distance. Their size, impossible. Their presence overwhelmed me with everything and nothing all at once. Reality folded in on itself as they moved. Now unable to ignore, I walked. I walked and walked. My feet coming into a steady rhythm.

Tick.

I called out to the creatures. I surrendered to them. One of them reached out to me with what I could only describe as a hand. I took it. I released myself to the current, I allowed time to take me with it, to sail upon its waters towards infinity.

I joined the creatures on the horizon.

Tick.

I became the clock. Every single one. The ones inside our bodies reminding us when to wake and when to sleep. The ones that reminded you when you were running late.

When your time was almost up.

I learned that time had been given life by sentient perception. I joined the chosen few. For time was a child, and it didn’t wish to die. So I, and presumably others before me, before humanity, joined the creatures on the horizon, to bear witness to the infinite unyielding flow of time.

Time only exists when there are those who perceive it.

(I wrote this on a whim. It is the first bit of writing that I have ever allowed out of the vault (The google doc filled with awful horrible attempts at stories) . I have been inspired by the writings of all of you and wanted to see if I could do it too. I am proud of this. Though out of fear of chickening out and not submitting it I have not proofread anything. Also, I truly am afraid of clocks. I wish I knew why.)