Human (Discontinued)

Chapter 9

Meredith shot me a look as soon as I called him grandad. I stayed smiling up at him, unmoving.
I could have told her beforehand, but knowing Meri, she wouldn't have come with me if she knew that the person we were going to meet was a relative of mine.
Besides, it's not like I liked him, or that he liked me, I just knew his story was legitimate. I saw it happen to him, I saw his clock stop.
It was when I was really little, maybe seven or eight years old, and my mom had picked me up from school before making her way to the place where my dad worked.
I remembered the rain pouring down in buckets, and watching two raindrops chase each other down the window pane. My parents hadn't gotten their divorce yet, and everything was normal as usual. Dad worked with mom's dad, grandad Thomas.
My mom put her phone up to her ear, to call my dad and ask where he was, when I saw grandad stumbling out into the rain. My mom instantly lowered her phone and stepped out, as he fell forward into a puddle, clutching his wrist. My mom ran out, yelling "Dad! Dad!", and I saw it, his wrist thrust upwards, the glare of the streetlight on the screen.
00:00
I saw him awake a few days later, mumbling about things like times and clocks and screens.
His clock had died, but he was still alive.
He ended up in this home after they concluded he was mad, and the clock was a glitch.
"What're you here for?" He asked gruffly, breaking me out of my flashback. I gave him a long, even look, before I reached for Meredith's hand and held it up.
He stared at the unmoving numbers for a brief second, before he sat across from us and sighed.
"Yeah. She wanted proof it could happen to other people, so I thought of you." I said simply.
"How kind." He grumbled, before looking Meri straight in the eyes, "What about you?"
She blinked and stared, before shifting uncomfortably.
"What...What do you mean?"
"You came over because you wanted proof you're alive?"
"I...I wanted to know why...why it stopped..."
"Why it stopped huh.." he sat back and tapped his cane a couple of times on the floor while he thought, "well...I have a theory. Not one that anyone believes, but still, a theory."
I didn't move as Meredith leaned forward in anticipation. I sighed and mentally prepared myself for a long, long story.
They both shot me identical looks, before turning back to each other.
"Well...To put it bluntly, there's always going to be a flaw with machines. You know, a kink in the armour. And for these...these unholy clocks, the flaw is human beings." We both looked at him incoherently, before he continued, "Human's aren't perfect, and not every watch will react to a human correctly."
"So...it was just chance..? That it stopped?" Meredith said after a long pause. Grandad frowned and shook his head slowly.
"Not chance. I couldn't tell you what it is, but there's probably a medical reason for it. I've been trying to figure it out for years, but now I'm trapped in this hell hole, so I've got not idea."
"So this was a waste of time. Again." Meri looked at me sharply, and sighed, bunching her hands into fists.
"Not for Callum, finally getting out of the house and doing something, and I haven't had a visitor in two years. And now you know that it wasn't a glitch and it doesn't happen to just anyone, and where to go to find someone who can help." Grandad said, narrowing his eyes at her.
"Who?" Meredith asked tiredly. I could feel her pain, every person we went to could only send us to to some other place for answers.
"My wife, she was a nurse. We wanted to try work these things out for years, and she was pretty damn close when I got locked up, pay her a visit."
I groaned inwardly, but didn't say anything. I didn't want to go to grandmas house, it always smelled like soup and dogs, probably from grandma's dog, Momo.
"Right...right...thank you..." Meredith shut her eyes before looking at me, exhausted, "let's go visit your grandma."