Tick-to-tick-tock
One day you just have to leave your hometown. One day you just have to find your own place, your own house, your own home – one day you just have to, that’s the unspoken law. And, just like any other law, disobeying it is severely punished – by the eyes of the onlookers and words of your friends.
Renting a house is an impressive fit for a college dropout. He’s lucky, really - and who cares if the home’s old, who cares if it’s falling apart? A house is a house, even if the roof is leaking. Even if the creaky cardboards feel like they’re about to give out, even if the carpet left here by the previous owners reeks of rot. It’s a house. A rather cheap one for being fully furnished, too.
Oh, but how it was furnished. Everything in the house had stains – even the wooden shelves, even the glass tables, even the walls themselves. At first he even tried to wash them out – tried to scrub away the filth, spending an impressive amount of money on gloves and detergents – but it never went away. And then he gave up, and then he just started adding to the mess.
He didn’t like the house from the very start. He didn’t like it, but it was the best available option at the time. And, of course, he was planning to move out of the house as soon as possible – but days turned to weeks, and weeks turned to months, and now he sat in the dirty kitchen, eyes glued to the screen of the laptop. He didn’t just dislike the house at this point, no – he hated it with a burning passion. And more than anything else he hated one god forsaken thing in it.
Tick-tock. The fucking clock.
It didn’t look bad, no, not at all – it was, in fact, the fanciest thing in the house. He even liked it at first. The stains on it almost looked organic, really – spots of whitish yellow on the dark wood would even appear somewhat classy, if not for the terrible wet smell emitting from them. And it worked, too – ticked away minute by minute, showing almost the exact time. And one would imagine that it would be nice to have some background noise – and one would be wrong. Every hour, every minute of every day the ticking was there – and the whole day it worked normally, simply swaying the pendulum from side to side, from side to side, from side to side. The whole day. But, the moment he went to sleep, something changed – something small, almost impossible to notice if you’re not laying in complete darkness. The sound seemed to lose its rhythm. Going slightly faster, going slightly too late – making him cringe in bed and cover his ears with a pillow.
And every night he simply suffered through it. He stayed in bed, completely motionless, awkwardly trying to count down the minutes. Counting down until the very morning, until the birds start singing outside, singing him to sleep. And, when he woke up in a few hours, when the alarm screamed at him – beep, beep, beep – the clock, as if out of evil genius, stopped with the chaotic ticks. It worked normally, it showed time, it kept the rhythm, and this almost made him question his sanity all together – because the time was still right, because there was no evidence of the machine misbehaving at night.
And every day he thought he should search for an explanation. Every day he entertained the idea of visiting a clock shop, every day he was just about to write about his experience on some forum and ask for advice – but he didn’t. There was never enough time, his boss would kill him for slacking off at work – and at home he had… important business to attend to.
This continued. Of course it did – it would be stupid to think that the issue would resolve itself. Not to say that he didn’t try every tip in the book for ignoring it, though. He moved to another room, as far away from the noise – yet it followed him there, seemingly to resonating off the walls. He tried locking the door and hanging a blanket onto it, but this did not drown out the sound. Hell, he even tried earplugs, even though he found them terrible to the touch – but even these didn’t seem to help.
The clock stood there, ticking away. Mocking him every night and day, it towered over him as he walked past – the white mold smirking at him. Every tick felt like a slap to the face, every turn of a hand like a kick to the stomach. And still, he refused to open the clock – he refused to study the mechanism. He felt like this would mean admitting defeat.
And once again laid in bed, his sanity melting away with every sound. It made him flinch, it made him turn in bed, it made him mutter to himself and growl, biting at the pillow. It was 3 am, and he had to get up in 3 hours. Again. And he wouldn’t get enough sleep. Again. And he will have to explain this to his boss. Again. And again, and again, and again, until this goddamn clock…
Stops.
Yes, for sure, this is the only thing left for him to do. So he gets up and goes to the pantry, his steps soft in the middle of the night – as if he had something to hide. And the clock kept ticking, the sound seemingly doubling. He grabbed the axe – he grabbed it and he ran out of the room, down the hallway, straight to the clock – the weapon above his head, the man’s mouth open in a silent scream. Here it is, just one more turn and the ticking will stop. It will stop forever and ever. It will all be fine.
Tick-to-tick-tock.
He stopped. He stopped and stood in place, his face frozen with terror. The axe fell to the ground with a loud thump – and the man closed his mouth with a hand, taking an awkward step backwards. There’s no running away now.
He never thought that some of the ticks could belong to something else.
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