Counter Clockwise

"I wish...time would just stop."

Sleeping has always been Xandra's getaway, but an impending vacation back to her hometown forces her to fully succumb into her mind. She has just been exhausted, working to the bone. And all she really wants is for time to stop, to let her rest for a while.

Until time starts to rewound.

Inside her treacherous mind, she meets a boy that introduced himself as a keeper of time. Time has stopped, he says. But when she wakes up why is it that time feels like it's running ever faster?

The boy too, was a familiar mystery. There's a constant something ticking at the back of Xandra's head, always present, never revealing itself. She knows who the boy was in her past, yet she doesn't. He tells her not to worry, but in her muddled mind she knows.

If she had been eleven years younger, she wouldn't have noticed it. The strange locks of hair, the blood under the trees, the house that crumbled around the edges.

And she remembers. Time hasn't stopped. It has been rewound.

And she needs to save the keeper of time. Miyo. Manasseh. Her friend.

But could she save someone who's already dead?

***
AMAZING COVER BY: @-bellawrites

Psychological drama
TW: mentions of suicide, abuse, trauma.
Started: October 14, 2022
Ended: November 6, 2022
WORD COUNT: 25K