The broken clock.

Time does not have a beginning or an end, neither it slows down, nor it ever turns back in the past. Like an arrow shot from a cosmic bow, it is embarked on a journey to infinity, neverending.

.  .  .

In a place far far away, as the clock on the wall struck nine times in the night, a young man, sitting at an office desk, raised his head and looked outsides the window. The night sky was full of stars and a cool breeze was flowing in. The air caressed his uncombed hair and calmed his tired face.

He hadn’t slept in days, it appeared, from his creased clothes and bloodshot eyes. There was a dispassionate look on his face like he didn’t belong, to this desk, or to this office. Slowly, he got up from the chair and moved towards the clock which was calling out sweet chimes only a few moments before.

The silence of the night had augmented the sound coming out from the clock -the movement of its visible hands, the working of the hidden gears. Tick tick tick.. it’s mechanical sound filling the empty room like the falling drops fills a tumbler -slowly and gradually. Its sound echoing and resonating into vibrations of many frequencies.

Expertly he took out the wall clock and placed it on the floor. Tick tick tick .. it continued for the last time as he took the spring out from its coil. And then, the room went silent as dead for a couple of seconds, but only for a couple of seconds, because soon after a rustling sound, like swift wind flowing through leaves, filled the room.

It was a sound of thousand voices, of man and of woman, of little children and of frail elderly; it was a sound of time from the past and time from the future, it filled the room with cries and laughter at the same time, of deep ecstasies and painful sufferings -it was the sound of the time as something living.

The young man fell back in an instant, being pushed away by strong ripples of time, emanating from the clock. Tortuously he crawled back to the clock, held its body, raised it in his hands such that it was at the level of his face.

There was no more the ticking hands and the fixed numbers. There was a mist instead, a dense black mist, which appeared originating somewhere inside the clock. He looked on and on, as the black mist turned to grey and then to pale white, almost colorless.

Behind it slowly he saw faces emerging. Faces of friends he once had, the family members he had spent time with. He saw the face of the girl he had loved once, had looked at her with love every day as she talked and laughed and made love as there was no tomorrow.

He looked at her face as it became clearer, and the memories stronger. His heart thumped his chest as he remembered her touch on his hand, her breath on his neck. He remembered her sweet smell filling his nostrils, her embrace making him alive.

And then he saw her. Behind the clock, becoming real in such unreal times. The clock fell with a thud on the floor.

He saw her sitting face to face, looking at him with the love and passion which he had craved for so long. She was smiling. She held her hands beckoning him to come close to her, embrace her, kiss her, touch her, lick her.

Like a man in thirst, he rushed to her, to claim her. He heard his heart beat.Dub dub dub.. or was it hers .. Maybe it was of both.. beating in sync like a symphony… dub dub dub. He touched her, full of wild passion and unfulfilled desires.

But the sensation of touch lasted only for a couple of seconds.

Her face, which was full of emotions a moment before, was drained of all emotions, her face turning into a pale white color first, then into a colorless hue that filled him with terror, her hands falling down like a dead log.

He shook her, slowly at first, then violently, to revive her. He called her, shouted, screamed out with deafening sounds but her words passed through her like smoke, without effect.

And then he felt his heartbeats stop. He felt a twisting pain inside his stomach, a thrust that pushed at his heart, and he felt life being sucked out of his body. But only for a couple of seconds.. For then everything became numb, muffed up, like the stuffed voices which one think he hears from a dream within a dream.

And then he got up at his desk, again, like he did an hour before and the hour before that..for he was riding on a broken arrow in time that was stuck between the two points in the time space that was doomed to repeat for eternity.