Glitch (The Write Awards 2013 Winner)

Glitch - Chapter 3

"Once upon a time, in a world far removed from our own, there lived a clockmaker. Her skill was a special one. No one could rival her knowledge on the intricacies  of time. She learnt her trade from her father and he had learnt the trade from his ancestors before him and for generations the family had been providing the gift of time to everyone in the land.

A grandfather clock, the oldest clock in the land, acted as a relic of her family history. It had been passed down from clock maker to clock maker. And even after all those years it still worked perfectly. Ticking away quite contently in the modest corridor of her home.

The clock maker spent her days repairing, replacing and creating clocks for anyone and everyone who asked for her assistance. But she was not lonely in her work. She had found love and had given her husband enough knowledge to assist her. Together they shared the burden of keeping time ticking over between them. They were very happy. And there would be no story to tell... if it weren't for the King.

The King of the land was a fool. Selfish, stupid and, the worst of his flaws, very, very vain. He didn't like the thought of growing old. He would count the creeping onslaught of wrinkles in the mirror each morning and curse the peppering of grey gathering amongst his hair. Eventually he came up with a plan. A very stupid, ill thought through plan.

In a bid to keep his youth he ordered that the clock maker be imprisoned. No one else would be able to fix the clocks. Time would stop. He thought he would stay young. And so, in the middle of the night, the clock maker was robbed from her home and taken to rot in the royal prisons; leaving her husband alone and without the necessary skill to keep the clocks ticking on his own.

As the King wished the clocks stopped ticking. The land fell silent. Of course he didn't stop aging. No one, no matter how rich or powerful, can slow the process of growing old. But his actions did have another unpredicted effect. Without the companion of time, without a way of dividing up the day and without direction the citizens of the land fell into a melancholy. Time is an organising force, it holds us together and without it people became subdued, lethargic and miserable.

No one was more miserable than the clock maker's husband. The pain of losing the woman he loved was a constant torment. Everyday he grew more miserable. Everyday he would pass the large grandfather clock in the hallway and see it gathering more dust; unable, for the first time in its history, to count time. And then one day it grew too much to bear. He grabbed the key of the grandfather clock and drove it into his heart; slowly winding away all the emotion until all that remained was the mechanical process. The cogs ticking over each other keeping him alive but not living. He ran like clockwork. Smooth, constant but unfeeling.

The people of the land eventually began to notice. The clock maker's husband never seemed miserable. But that was only because he could not feel anything at all. They didn't notice his absence of happiness. Blinded by ignorance induced in the absence of time they only saw his lack of misery. And so they asked his secret; desperately craving to find solace from melancholy themselves. He told them without reservation. Soon the whole land was plunging clock keys into their hearts just to numb the pain. And so the entire land ran like clockwork. Constant, smooth, unfeeling.

People stopped attending the King's grand balls, no one came to his galas and no one cheered at his speeches. Celebration requires emotion and his subjects had given theirs away. Dear friends, insignificant commoners. Background did not matter. They had all abandoned the King to dwell in emotionless peace.

It took years, but finally he came to his senses. He continued to grow older as his land continued to shrivel and decay. The land needed time. It had grown dead without it. More importantly the land needed the clock maker. She was released with the orders to tour the kingdom and fix every clock. She wasn't to return home until the everywhere rang with the sound of ticking once more. She obliged. What choice did she have?

But she didn't just fix the clocks. She repaired the people too; pulling the wind-up keys out of hearts and restoring emotion once more. It was a long process. But the thought of returning home to her husband kept her going. Singlehandedly the clock maker restored life once more.

Finally,  when she had completed her work, the clock maker was able to return home. She travelled through the night just to be with her husband. And when the land arduous journey was over she could barely carry the weight of her heart hammering with anticipation as she burst through the front door.

The clock maker's husband was waiting in the hallway. Seemingly forgetful about what it was he was waiting for in the first place. Staring with empty eyes at the motionless grandfather clock. He didn't show any signs of recognition at her entrance. It was clear he was under the influence of a mechanical heart. But when she rushed to remove the key she could not locate it. It had been lodged in his heart longer than anyone else in the land. Too long. The flesh had sealed over it. Removing the key would have stopped his heart dead.

Her husband was gone forever and all that remained was a clockwork imitation. She tried to restore her life back to normal. Tried to teach him how to love. But it was no use. He was nothing more than machine. The torment of being able to view the outline of her husband without the access to his heart was enough to drive her mad with longing. And so the clock maker did the only thing she could.

She drove a wind-up key into her own heart.

The rest of the land lived in relative happiness. Time restored, hearts alive with emotion and lives returned to normal.

But not the clock maker and her husband.

They ran like clockwork.

Smooth, constant but cold as the metal key that locked them in their emotionless state. They spent the rest of their days repairing, replacing and creating clocks for the land. Neither happy nor sad; dead nor alive. Working together, but without the capabilities of ever understanding what it was that bound them together in the first place..."

The tale rolled off her tongue with a surprising ease considering she had not told it for a number of years. Older, she was now able to embellish her performance. Benny transformed from a lively mischief maker to a polite audience in moments. It was as if the two had been transported back to the past. Every moment rang with a dull pang of miserable nostalgia. As the story progressed Benny’s head sank lower to the pillow. When Freya began to deliver the last few words his eyelids had begun to flutter with the threat of sleep. 

“Leaving the clock maker and her husband  to live a ha…”

“They’re here.” Freya had not noticed her mother enter the room. But the words created a complete silence to engulf the room. As her mouth hung open from where the words had been snatched from her, she waited for a response to grip her. But nothing came. All that she could feel was the ache of emptiness ringing inside her. She reached a shaking hand to smooth the ruffled hair of her brother gently before whispering her words into the shattered silence with a choke of tears threatening to break through.

“A happy-less ever after.”