Teeny Tiny Stories

Broken Clock

"Why do you still keep this thing?"

"Mm?"

"I mean this watch. Why don't you just throw it away, it's useless."

The girl on the bed rolled over to look at her best friend, who was currently sprawled out on the floor. She was examining a pretty, bronze colored pocket watch. 

"I mean yeah it looks cool," the girl on the floor admitted, turning the watch over in her hands, "but that's about all its got going for it." 

Sitting up, the girl occupying the bed reached over and plucked it out of her friends hands. Holding it up to her face and dangling it by its chain, she watched as it lazily spun around. The back engraved in a beautiful pattern with flowers adorning the middle. The front decorated with dozens of small gears encircling the center, which exposed the clock's still, yet intricate hands. 

"Well, I was going to throw it away a few days ago." She confessed and placed the watch in her hand. She popped it open to reveal the clock coming to life, its second-hand steadily ticking away. "But I decided not to."

Her friend shifted her position on the floor and stuck her foot up onto the bed. "What changed your mind? I woulda just said "oh well" and tossed it in the trash. That or save up to repair it." 

The girl holding the watch playfully shoved her friends foot off the edge and flopped back onto the bed, still holding the pocket watch up to her face. "I don't know. But...when its closed it seems broken, dead, and useless." She demonstrated by closing the watch, its hands halting their movement and the patterned ticking vanishing as she did. "But when opened, you can see that its actually still working. Only able to barely keep up with its purpose." She opened it again. "And even if its damaged and unable to keep time, it's still right twice a day. Even if most people judge it as a useless hunk of garbage." She listened to it tick for a few seconds, then snapped it shut and let her hand fall to her side. In an almost audible whisper she murmured, "It reminds me of myself." 

After a few moments of contemplative silence, from the floor her friend said, "Wow man that was deep." and pulled her out of her reverie.                                                                                                            

She laughed, "I know right, I could be a famous poet!" 

In response her friend snorted, "Maybe only a poet. Gurl lower yo expectations." 

Both girls dissolved into laughter, the subject of the pocket watch abandoned. The rest of their time they spent discussing their possibility of huge success and what they would do if they ever became famous. The forgotten pocket watch emitted a feeble tick and the hour hand moved once, then was still.