They call it a Clock Witch.

A gluttonous little creature that burrows into the brassy depths of gears, cogs and springs, nibbling away at all measures of time. A Clock Witch, they say, is the reason your ten-minute snooze rings in ten seconds. It’s the reason the morning hours pass quicker before work or school and the hours during work or school seem to drag on for days. According to Newt Scamander’s Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them, the mundane hours of a witch or wizard’s life are the most unfavorable in both taste and satisfaction. A Clock Witch prefers only the finest of hours, the most scrumptious of minutes and savory of seconds. These are unfortunately, and more often than not, the most important.

I’d never heard of a Clock Witch before. 

Until now, I had always assumed that time was just time and there was nothing more mischievous and gluttonous than time itself. Nights spent mulling over my new discovery were quick to prove me wrong and after lapping up the dusty words of old books that had been touched by nothing but time (inhaling a grimy cloud or two and pausing only to let pass a fit of coughs and hacks), I decided I’d meet a Clock Witch for myself.

The process of extracting a Clock Witch from a clock would be a delicate one, of that I had no doubt. But I figured I’d read enough pointless manuals and various How-To's to handle the situation. There was bound to be a tidbit of clock-picking skills stored somewhere in my mind's waste bin of useless information, not so useless now that I'd found a use. Of course I could have cast a few spells, muttered a few charms. But that would have been too easy. Aside of meeting the Clock Witch, I intended to catch it and like catching any other pest, one can never expect such a task to be simple.

So much for pointless manuals and various How-To's. 

Instead, I found my clock-picking skills through Disney's 1951 adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Like the Mad Hatter, I sat determined. Fork in one hand and a timepiece in the other, I pried all four prongs between the brass seam and pulled.

Tick. Pop. Spring!

Gears flew, screws spun. An impish laugh rose from the still ticking heart, a small burst of cold air hitting my cheek in its escape. I stared down at the dissected apparatus, my own muddy reflection staring back from the rusted clockwork. 

Empty.

I checked the time on the intact and well functioning wall clock above my desk. 10:37 PM. In the hours I'd spent searching for this pest of prime, I'd missed study hall, two exams, and a much anticipated chess game with a friend.

They call it a Clock Witch.

A Clock Witch prefers only the finest of hours, the most scrumptious of minutes and savory of seconds. And these are unfortunately, and more often than not, the most important.

Something's crawling around inside of you.

You can feel it move and you can feel it squirm, but you don't know what it is because you can't move and you can't see anything at the moment except blackness.

Strictly speaking, it doesn't hurt, but it feels disturbing. Whatever it is, it crawls underneath your skin, under all the layers of your dermis, and you can track its movements thanks to the pressure it applies between your muscle and your skin, until it disappears to where you assume are the gaps between the touch-centers of your nervous system. Then, you feel something crawl and squirm from another part of your body, say your arm, or your leg, but you're not sure if that's the same thing or its cousin.

It is a maddening sensation, as your body's sanctity is repeatedly violated by an unknown presence that refuses to leave. You cry but you hear nothing but your own echo. It is either uninterested or incapable of understanding you and so, it continues to squirm.

Time goes by. You get used to it after a while. Human beings can, after all, get used to just about anything. One minute, a bump, the next, it disappears. What bothers you is how you can't move and can't see, but can still hear, touch, taste, and smell your environment.

There doesn't appear to be anything wherever you are because you can't hear anything other than your breathing, your heartbeat, and your slight tinnitus.

The air doesn't smell fresh. Stale, perhaps, but not foul. There's the faint taint of oxidized metal, but nothing worse than a rusted slide in an old park.

You feel a little cold, but not because of the ambient temperature. If you had clothes on, you'd feel all right, but right now all you feel is the interaction of skin, air, and whatever it is underneath your skin.

As for the taste, well, is dry a taste? You feel thirsty, and it's starting to feel like whatever's going on with you has gone on for a while.

Time marches on until you feel a new sensation.

Hmm. Curious. A truly new sensation. It appears that it, or something else, has made it to your internal organs. You're not sure, but it just appeared, and if your sense of internal anatomy is correct, it has just made contact in-between the soft-tissues of your small intestines. You can really feel the probing as it squirms about with no particular purpose or direction - it's just moving around and slowly herniating your organs.

This sets off another attack. You try to scratch at whatever it is that's inside you, but you don't feel anything contact with your skin. You try to move your arms, but there's no feedback. It's almost as if your arms are no longer there.

That makes you try to move your feet, but again, absence, gone, like a phantom. That makes you wonder - since when have you been unable to move your limbs?

After what seems like hours, you stop feeling the displacement of your organs. You try enjoying this period of rest, but you feel weak and exhausted. Your mouth has turned to chalk and your thirst and hunger is set to ten. It is getting harder to breathe. Your head feels like it's about to explode. You have so many thoughts racing inside your mind that you are confused and muddled.

"What's happening to me?"

"I'm so thirsty."

"I want to stand up.

"I want to lie down.

"I'm getting dizzy."

"I feel so bloated."

"My heart is racing."

"I'm so thirsty."

"Am I going to die?"

It feels like the world is closing in on you and existence itself is painful.

But it doesn't end.