The Clock

He stared back at it and it stared back at him. His imagination imposed itself on the blank page, where characters, settings, and worlds seemed to breathe and live and die every millisecond and then were surpassed by the next. The room was cold and he liked it that way. A long time ago a fellow writer had told him that the cold was the best place to write and to be inspired because the cold was oppressive.

“And in this oppression, a mind either succumbs or rebels, and in rebelling creates something beautiful,” he had said.

He was succumbing.

His eyes rose to the old clock that rested on the wall above him. The face of it was slightly yellowed and the numbers that circled it were ornate and meticulously done. The minute and hour hands were also done in this meticulous fashion, the lace fingers stretching up and pointing to the numbers as they went slowly by. The red second hand, however, was the most beautiful. The hand was bathed in a scarlet red and was accentuated with designs throughout moving with determined speed around the clock constantly and ticking lightly as it sped. His father had said the clock had been in the family for generations ticking through the lives of many ceaselessly. In his life, however, it had stopped once, when he was a child coming back from 6th grade. He had walked up to his room, the events of the day whirling around in his adolescent mind and had casually glanced up at the clock. 1:15. The second hand of the clock had frozen in between the "3" and "4" on the clock and struggled with all its might to break free, but was unsuccessful and remained chained to a motionless infinity. He remembered how his face had contorted and his thoughts became frantic and distraught. The hands of the clock had been ticking above him all of his life and now they were trapped in time. He thought that the world stopped, that he was living inside of a moment and that he couldn’t escape. He tried screaming but his vocal cords too were stunned and refused to obey him. So he stood, mouth gaping and face contorted at the sight, of a world stuck at 1:15.

Later his dad took the clock to be fixed and the next day it was back in its original place, the hands being freed and ticking happily again. His dad told him that his friend John had repaired the clock and for many years following he believed that John had truly saved the world, having unfrozen time and allowed life to continue to progress.

It was 12:48 now and many, many years later. John died of natural causes a few years back and it made for a wonderful funeral. He thanked John for unfreezing time and his wife had cried at that. Afterward, she went up to him and said that John had told her how glad he was to fix something that meant so much to his family. She died later that year and was buried next to John.

His parents were had both died of natural causes awhile ago about a year apart from each other. He remembered sitting in the hospital with both of them with tears welling in his eyes and dried tears staining his face. His mother had gone first and she went smiling. As she lay in that bleached and sterilized room she had looked at him with eyes full of the most caring love. The love only a mother can have for a son, an incorruptible love that somehow brought every moment of love between them together and was still greater than any past moment or even all of them put together.

“I love you, Mom.”

She smiled, a blissfully and soft smile, closed her eyes and laid back. He hugged her body and was truly embracing her soul, and that soul embraced him one last time and went on.

His father had been a different story. He hadn’t seen him since his mother’s funeral and had finally gotten word after it was too late to do anything but wait for him to die. An angry storm was raging over a remorseful sky and the rain had fallen like tears on his head as he walked into the emergency room.

“Harold Pugh?” he asked a pretty lady at a desk.

She scanned the record with a well-manicured finger and finally found the name.

“Room 5C,” she said, “you better hurry.”

He did.

What lay on the other side of 5C was an almost unrecognizable man. His father had let his hair grow to be unruly and tangled and it was evident by his patchy beard that he hadn’t shaved in days. His clothes were in tatters and the boots he wore had decomposed to the point of being obsolete. The worst thing though was his physical state. This man, whom he came to know as being a symbol of masculinity and strength, had receded to a feeble and seemingly emaciated state. His barrel-chested wide frame was gone and now he was wiry and frail, so thin in fact that he thought that he could pick his dad up if he wished to.

Harold Pugh gave his son a weak smile as he entered that seemed to be an immense physical struggle for him. His heart broke at the sight.

“Dad, what happened?”

Tears welled up in the man’s eyes as the corners of his mouth trembled. He knew the answer before he spoke.

“She left Michael, and I couldn’t go on.”

The statement sent powerful waves of emotion through Michael’s body, emotions he wasn’t ready for and hadn’t encountered before. If pressed he would’ve called it sadness but it was much more than that. It was like seeing someone slit their wrist and understanding why. And truly that's what happened, his dad had just let life bleed him out and suck everything out of him.

“It wasn’t your fault Dad, it wasn’t anyone’s fault,” he said tears unconsciously pouring from his eyes.

“I could’ve given her more, I could’ve given her something, I could’ve given her my life I could’ve given her anything,” his dad said staring into his son’s eyes.

In his eyes, he had seen a boundless love like his mother had shown him, but in these eyes the love was different. The love was streaked his the black tinges of loss and remorse and resentfulness at every mistake. In his eyes a love that reaches out to hold and embrace something that isn’t there anymore. So that love tortures itself by remembering its object and with tears in its eyes once again reaches out to hold its object and it once again holds nothing and the cycle moves on. His dad had been living in that pitiful cycle every second since his wife had passed on and his body had finally had enough. As he stared back into his father’s eyes he understood it all and he hated it all.

“Dad…”

Just then his father’s eyes had become wild and frantic like Michael’s eyes when he had discovered that time had stopped. His head searched maniacally and he seemed to forget where he was or who he was. Finally, this wild gaze landed on Michael and froze on Michael, his father’s mouth gaping open in fear and confusion. He couldn’t bring himself to close his father’s eyes or even touch him and simply backed away with his arm outstretched putting distance between him and that lifeless body. A scream rose to his mouth but it was once again noiseless and he continued to back away, a confused and scared child. Michael at that moment became part of that vicious cycle, his love lost and scared and sad.

The paper in front of him was style blank but a couple tears had stained the blank sheet. He looked once again at the clock.

1:15.