Short Stories

Clocks

The ticking beat within me was never supposed to stop. It was meant to keep me going, keep me safe, keep me living. It was never supposed to stop. I wasn't supposed to die. The tick-tick-ticking inside of my core was meant to make me immortal.
At least, that's what she told me.
I was dying. I wasn't ready to leave behind this life, this body, this mind. I couldn't move on. Not yet. Twenty three was too young to die.
I was young. I was foolish. I believed her, when she offered help. I was completely helpless as I lay there on an abandoned dock on the sea, with no one but the wind to help me.
I don't remember most of what happened, but I do remember the rain. If my heart would have given me the time, the constant patter would have drove me out of my mind if she had not found me.
Her face hovering above me is something I could never forget. Her brown curls, her blue eyes that made my soul ache even more so than my fading heart. She was everything and nothing. Light and dark. Beauty that was fading. My eyes were weary, my body failing. She murmured something, or maybe she screamed. The details were as fuzzy as my vision. My dulled mind somehow knew she wanted to help. I nodded, and drifted off into what I thought was the next life.
But it wasn't the next life. Not yet.
When I woke, she was gone. She had taken my heart. And in its place was a frigid clock.
It was fitting, in hindsight, for my heart to become as frigid as its replacement. I stopped caring.
My job. My friends. My lover. My family. My life. I gave up. I stopped trying. I had been given a second chance, and I wasted it pacing up and down the dock where I had been saved. I didn't get it. Why me? It's not like I meant anything to anyone, anyway. Why would she save me?
I wish I could say I never saw her again. That would be much better than what came to pass.
I woke in a cold sweat, panic had invaded my faded dream. I checked my watch. Four thirty in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I've given up on that, too.
I walked to the dock, mist had surrounded me so tightly that I could barely see. But I continued on.
The mist cleared, and at the end of the dock I saw her. The face that was so fuzzy in my mind I almost thought it came from a dream. But she was real.
The clock was real.
My life was real. A fact that I wanted to forget.
She stood there, staring me down with such hatred and love all at once it was impossible to look away.
I asked her what she wanted. She told me that she needed nothing more than to tell me about the machine whirring inside of me.
She said it kept me alive. She said that with it, I would never die. She said that it would never stop, and neither would I.
Me. Immortal. The person who hated life the most was forced to live through an eternity.
I wanted death. But no matter how many times I tried after that day, it was never given to me.
I began to hate her. To hate the face that had given me life. It was a gift I wanted to throw away. To lock up. To never see again. To act like it never existed.
I didn't get my wish.
Slowly, I watched my friends and family fade away into the oblivion that I longed for. I withdrew from the world. From people. From any attachment that could break my already broken heart. I spent my days wandering around the square by where I was saved. I struggled to go back to the dock. I don't know why I did that day. Maybe in hopes of seeing her again, even though she would have died a hundred times over by then.
As I approached, I noticed a little speck of color peeking out from the dock. I saw that it was a flower, growing where no others would even dare to.
The same dock that had given me life had also given life to this tiny flower. And if a flower's life could be beautiful, so could mine.
I made a change, that day. I was determined to put my life to work. If I was to live forever, then I might as well do something other than wish for the past.
I found a job. A home. I made more friends, knowing that they would all die in a blink of an eye, yet if I could make their lives better, it would be worth it.
I found a purpose again. I found love again. I found life again.
Then one day, it stopped. The clock stopped ticking. I never woke up. The thing I had wanted the most I now have, but I no longer wish for death.
I sit in a white room now. I know not where I am. I've been here for an eternity, and yet only for a millisecond. Hours, seconds, years, days. Time flies, but it remains still. I'm trapped in what my old self would have considered paradise. It's like I don't exist.
I hear something. I look up, curious. The girl stands there, as mysterious and radiant as she was when I first saw her so many years ago. Like myself, she hasn't aged a day.
She asks me if I know why she brought me here.
I shake my head, confused.
She says that when she saved my life that day, she knew how I would feel. Knew that I would want death. She knew that someday, though, I would want life. She brought me here to let me know that I had made the right choice.
The wall behind her slides open to reveal every person I had ever spoken to, those who I had made a difference to. Their eyes fixate on me, and they smile at what they see.
There was a point in my life when I thought that no one would ever look at me this way, but seeing all of these smiling faces before me puts a joy within me that I will never be able to describe.
She approaches me, her footsteps echoing in the silence surrounding us. She places her fingertips on my chest, where my broken clock lies. With her gentle touch, the clock within me begins ticking once more.
She tells me to go back and continue to make an impact on people's lives.
And then she's gone.
I wake in my own bed, in my own home. I sit in awe until I notice the time. I scramble to get ready for work, even though I'm four hours late. While the Foreman won't understand, I know that even the smallest thing has the power to change the coldest hearts.