Talking Clock Novels & Stories

But the warmth was a lie, or at least, it felt like one. He reached into his pocket and his fingers brushed the cold, shattered face of the pocket watch. **Tick. Tick. Tick.** The sound wasn't coming from gears or springs. It was coming from the air itself. It was a countdown that had no visible numbers, a heartbeat of a machine that refused to stay dead. "Rowan?"

Some are reading magazines from three years ago. We don't look at each other. We are islands of misery in a sea of beige. I look at the clock on the wall. It is a standard analog clock. A black circle with a white face. The second hand ticks. Tick. Tick. Tick. It sounds like a countdown. I start counting. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. It is the old habit. The survival mechanism. I count to keep from thinking. I count to keep from feeling. Four seconds. Five seconds.

The clock on the nightstand reads 11:47. Midnight is thirteen minutes away. The numbers glow red in the dark room, pulsing like a heartbeat, like a countdown, like a warning. Nathaniel is on the phone with Marcus, his voice low, urgent, the words spilling out in rushed bursts. Julian is pulling security footage from the building across the street, frame by frame, searching for a face, a shadow, a shape in the dark.

as a natural, genetic inheritance. "Grandpa, tell me about the 'Tick-Tock' again," a young girl named Elara asked. She was barely six, her eyes glowing with a steady, peaceful violet light. To her, the idea of a world without the "Hum" was as alien as a world without air.

"There, now everyone will know what time it is." "Hm, this can prove quite useful. And what did you say it was called again?" Len inspected his, curious. "It's called a watch. It will tell you what time of day or night it is." "This will be much more useful then just the position of the sun in the sky." Len nodded. "Great, now there's no excuse for being late to meetings," Salax groaned. "You'd be late no matter what," Furo yawned, promptly going to sleep in his chair.

She nodded to Sera, who tapped a specific sequence on the pedestal’s interface. Suddenly, the "stopped" clock didn't just restart; it transformed. The pedestal’s glass cleared, revealing that the "stopped" gears were merely a holographic projection—the "Ghost Pedestal" Elias had created. The real Medici clock was perfectly functional, its golden gears moving with a silent, mesmerizing fluidity.

It was pretty easy. When I came back downstairs thirty minutes later, Alejandro was done cleaning. He was sitting on the couch and… waiting for me? He looked up when he heard me reaching the last step. “Can you turn off that clock, please? It’s annoyingly loud.” He held his head with his eyes closed. “No way,” I gave him a pointed look when he looked at me. “Why?” “It’s the only clock I’ve got in the living room and it’s antique.” I said with a nonchalant shrug as though that was reasonable enough which it was. “How would I check the time every time?”

“Teach me how to play the part of a 'normal man.'” The grandfather clock in the corner chimed. Two o'clock. The countdown had begun.

I couldn't possibly let him die before my eyes, could I? "I gave you this Geneva Watch on your birthday, but I'd been playing truth or dare with my friends and got dared to post a story of my ex on my social media, and that was why Claude was in my stories that day. "I gave you this Piaget because…" I lost patience listening to her yap and went to the neighborhood Starbucks to get myself some coffee. Meanwhile, Ariel still continued yapping as she followed me around, trying to explain herself. Eventually, her confidence began to run out. I took a sip of my coffee and interrupted her.

I narrowed my eyes at a brown clock on the table as we made our way outside. "What's this?" I stopped to pick it up. "That's just my time run." He said, receiving the rusty looking clock from me. "Don't touch it, it could be dangerous." "Dangerous, how?" I resumed walking while he led the way. "You see, for three years now, I've been working on a time machine, but that's never happened. No success at all." He began. "Okay?" I raised a questioning eyebrow at him. "But I managed to come up with the time run. It's a reverse clock that takes you to twelve noon the day you use it." He explained even though I was unable to comprehend.