The Clockmaker’s Gift
Elias Mercer had never believed in miracles. The rain had been relentless all day, hammering the cobblestones of the old town like an anxious heartbeat. He trudged through puddles, umbrella failing him, toward the shop tucked between two collapsing brownstones—a relic of a city that had long since forgotten its own past.
The sign above the door read simply: Hawthorne’s Timepieces.
Inside, the air smelled of polished wood, oil, and something older… something that hummed faintly, like the memory of centuries. Rows of clocks lined the walls, each ticking with a rhythm slightly out of sync with the others, creating a dizzying, dissonant melody.
“Can I help you?” A voice rasped from the shadows.
Elias looked up to see an old man hunched over a counter, spectacles perched on the tip of his nose. His eyes were sharp, too sharp, as if they could see through the walls of time itself.
“I—uh—I’m looking for something… unusual,” Elias stammered.
The old man’s lips curved into a knowing smile. “Unusual? Oh, I have exactly what you need.”
From beneath the counter, he pulled out a pocket watch. Its surface shimmered unnaturally, catching the light in a way that made Elias squint. The hands moved, but not clockwise. They spun in erratic patterns, like they were alive, like they had a mind of their own.
“This,” the old man whispered, “is not a mere timepiece. It’s a doorway.”
Elias laughed nervously. “A doorway?”
“To what?”
“To anywhen,” the man said. “To the past… or the future. But be warned: time is not forgiving. It tests the souls it touches.”
Elias hesitated. The absurdity was glaring, but something about the watch tugged at him, deep in his chest, like a memory he had never lived but somehow knew.
“How much?” he asked.
The old man didn’t respond. Instead, he leaned forward, eyes glinting. “It isn’t sold. It is given. And only if the universe chooses you.”
The floorboards creaked under Elias’ weight as he hesitated. Then, almost instinctively, he reached out. The watch slid into his hand. The moment his fingers closed around it, the shop seemed to fall away. The ticking of the clocks became thunderous, deafening, and the air shimmered like heat above asphalt.
A voice, not human, whispered in his mind: Choose a moment.
Elias stumbled back. “I—I don’t understand.”
Choose, it said again. The past you wish you could undo… or the future you wish you could see.
Elias’ heart pounded. There had been so many moments he wanted to change. The accident. The words he hadn’t spoken. The life he had let slip through his fingers.
He clenched the watch. “I… I want to see the day she died.”
A sudden vertigo swept over him. The walls of the shop blurred and cracked, the clocks’ hands melting like wax. When his vision cleared, he was standing on a familiar street… decades ago. Rain slicked and cold. And there, across the cobblestones, was her—Lydia. Her laugh echoed, high and bright, as she ran toward him.
Time felt fragile, like glass. Elias’ breath caught in his throat. He wanted to call to her, to warn her, but his voice faltered.
Then he saw it: a car, speeding, unseen by anyone else, its headlights like demons piercing the night.
“No!” he screamed.
The watch burned against his chest, pulling him forward. He lunged, grasped her arm—but the moment shattered like a reflection in broken glass. He fell backward, tumbling through streets that blurred, twisting past years he had never lived, decades he had never seen.
When he landed, gasping, he was no longer alone. Figures emerged from the shadows, cloaked, faceless, surrounding him in silence.
“You meddle with time,” one hissed, voice like grinding metal. “Do you understand the cost?”
Elias tried to speak, but his throat was dry. “I… I just wanted… to save her.”
The figures shifted closer. “Every choice echoes. Every interference ripples. You may save one life… and destroy countless others.”
The watch pulsed, violently hot now, its hands spinning faster than thought. Elias realized the truth: this power was not a gift. It was a trap. Time demanded balance, and he had upset it.
Visions crashed around him. He saw himself as a child, a stranger, an old man. He saw wars erupting where they had never been, storms swallowing cities, strangers screaming in fear. All traced back to that single moment he had tried to change.
And then—her face. Lydia’s face, smiling, eyes wide with life. But behind her, shadows moved, creeping, monstrous. They were consequences, born of his interference, and they reached for him.
Elias screamed and turned the watch in his hand, desperate, chaotic. The world fractured, each tick tearing reality, each tock a heartbeat in the cosmic judgment.
Suddenly, he was back in the shop. The old man’s eyes were wide. “It chose you,” he said quietly. “But the first lesson of time… is this: you cannot save what must be lost. You cannot see what has not yet arrived without consequence.”
Elias dropped the watch. It skittered across the floor, stopping with the hands pointing straight down. Silence filled the room. The clocks ticked normally again.
“I… I killed her?” Elias whispered, tears stinging his eyes.
The old man shook his head. “No. You only glimpsed her. But you saw what your heart wished for. Time does not forgive interference—it tests desire. Do you understand?”
Elias felt the weight of the ages pressing on him. He had wanted power, knowledge, hope… but what he had found was terror. The threads of reality were fragile, and he had toyed with them.
He looked at the watch, now silent. The urge to use it again gnawed at him, insistent, seductive. But he knew the truth. Some doors were meant to remain closed.
“I… I don’t want it,” he said finally.
The old man nodded. “Wise. Most would take it again, and again, until all meaning is lost. Remember, the moment you wish to change is not always the one you need to see.”
Elias left the shop into the rain, the city around him mundane and unchanged, yet forever altered in his mind. Every drop that fell on his face was a reminder of the past he could never touch, the future he could never see, and the present he had almost destroyed.
At home, he placed the watch in a drawer. The ticking had stopped. For a moment, he thought he heard it pulse faintly, like a heartbeat beneath the floorboards. He shivered.
Outside, thunder rolled. Somewhere, a child laughed, a stranger screamed, a life was saved, a life was lost. And Elias Mercer knew, with a certainty that made his skin crawl, that the world was still moving, still fragile… and that he had glimpsed the terror behind every second that passed.
He closed his eyes, and for the first time in years, he let the rain wash over him, grounding him in the terrifying, miraculous, unchangeable present.
Time was infinite. He was not.
