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Chapter XI

The clocks are all around, ticking, marking off the seconds in twisted, harmonic beats that land in crashing swaths of scorn. Everywhere there are clocks, the definitions of time, objects crammed with gears and cranks, bestowed with meaning by mere virtue of the rate at which the hands move. And yet, these clocks are all tell me something different. I, at least, cannot make out any sense in all this noise. Even the seconds are not uniform; the various size and the spacing of the ticks are so plentifold and so individual that the humming, strumming, noisome cataclysm of time seems to be all of them at once, or none at all.

I can only sit in their midst and watch, with a honed, cracked wonder, as the faces of the great clocks leer back at me.

I'm even sitting on them. All over me they sneer, taunting, laughing. Beside me they scream, screech, holler, and rave. Spitting out their mechanical diatribe, guarding the hallowed cadence of the moments. And yet the truth is lost among them. All I can perceive is lies in their faces, horrendous, malicious lies. All for deceit, for evil, for naught.

Tick, tock, tick tock. Tick tock. Tick.

Tock. Awkward it seems, lurid, deceptive, and yet concentration only yields an individual truth, a fact that is known and believed. But in the sum there is nothing. Just noise. Wholesome, impetuous noise.

Tick tock.

I find myself here often, and always I wish the awful, laughing faces of the timepieces would just shut up, leave me alone, give me some peace - but no! They doll on, forever onward, and I know that even when my tired heart has ceased to beat and no longer can I perceive them will they clock ever onward, throwing out the seconds upon my still chest as if they were shovelfuls of dirt. Burying me.

Tock tick. Tick.

Oh, it's rather eerie. Sometimes it gets on my nerves, grates there. I try and supress it, but sometimes the feeling is just too strong.

"What time is it?"

The voice is so harsh, so bitter, so filled with putrifaction, that I hardly recognize it for my own. How it tore past my lips I do not know, but they are the only words left in my brain. The only question I can believe in, that I could ever know existed. But the clocks do not answer.

Tick.

I did not expect them to. Of course, they will continue to laugh, like they've always done, like they'll always do, and condemn me to the slow death of a statue.

Tock.

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Chapter XI

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