"He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry"

Late at night, a darkened room was holding its breath. The only sound in the room was one of a clock ticking, rhythmically tapping out into the inky night like a warning sign, ‘tick, tick tick.’ And silence. The room, unlit and small was scarcely more than a closet, a gathering of space that had been forgotten, tucked out of sight. Hanging next to the clock a big, wide window gazed out to the streets below. As the clock played its monotonous tune in the shadows, the window lay firmly shut and obscured by a curtain. If you threw the curtain away, the room would dance with the colors of the city, flashing lights and neon signs. Perhaps outside there were stars, little bursts of light in the air. Perhaps the moon was raining down on the tops of buildings, hanging from the clouds as if on a wire. But as it was, the room remained empty and black, nothing but a clock ringing out in the stale air and a girl, hidden underneath the folds of her blanket, lost in her lonely dreams.

The girl woke up slowly. Her eyes woke first, fluttering and flitting, shutting tight and opening wide, looking around, adjusting. This was always the way in the morning. Every awakening marked the end of some hopeless serenity, the listless dreams her only exit from ‘the real world,’ the stuff that hurt. The girl stretched, her muscles tightening, coiling. ‘Good Morning,’ she whispered. Then silence. And the clock.

At 7.00, the girl made a pot of tea. She timed it perfectly, first setting the kettle to boil, then laying out the mug, the sugar, the milk, the teaspoon, all the while pattering around in her worn stripy socks. When it was done, she sat in a hard wooden chair and drank it slowly, looking at nothing, thinking of nothing, and still the clock, and still the silence. But there was a world outside, she could hear it humming.

The girl dressed in the corner of her room, hiding from the window, the people might see, look up, idly wondering, and then her, getting dressed, we wouldn’t want that, it was easier if she hid. Quickly she put on her clothes, boring and drab but that was okay, clothes are just clothes, just material, and anyway where was the money to look good, to look presentable, it’s all for sex anyway isn’t it and goddam why is that clock so loud? She didn’t stop to look at herself afterwards, and anyway there were no mirrors. At 8.00, the girl picked up a suitcase. It was small, leather, boring, but maybe it was poetic too, the boringness of it all. Maybe there is something poetic in everything that seems to hold nothing, blank but for a sense of wistfulness. Or maybe it was just a suitcase and maybe it was just a clock and maybe everything was just exactly what it was and nothing more. The girl left her apartment quickly, in case something decided to hold her back.

Down the flights of stairs the girl climbed, and this time the only sound was her feet pattering, one step after another, ‘step step step step,’ but it was echoing loudly and all blending into one so it was more like ‘stepstepstepptestsep.’ She didn’t take the elevator, she didn’t trust elevators and anyway what if there was an emergency and she couldn’t get down; she would die there, in an elevator shaft with her terrible suitcase and imagine the embarrassment. She tried to hurry down the stairs to escape the sound but that only made it louder and it felt like there were a little man screaming ‘STEPSTEP’ in her head and banging on the walls.

And then the stairway abruptly ended and there was the street and the whole world was drawn out like a map only real, only complete and unwavering. And the clocks were everywhere, and the clocks were everything around her, (can you hear them, hear them screaming,) and the clocks were the cars buzzing and the advertisements shouting and the people scrawled like bugs on the pavement. And then the bugs crawled into her mind and they crawled into her brain and she realized the clock was ticking inside of her, it was always inside of her and it would never end. It would never end until she drew her last breath and the minute hand hung still and cold to the 12, ticking and silence. Finally, silence.