The Backward Tick

He found it in a shop that smelled of old wood and forgotten lives, crammed between a chipped porcelain doll and a stack of encyclopedias missing their 'G'. An ornate mantel clock, dark mahogany, with brass flourishes dulled by time. Nothing special, really. Just another piece of somebody else’s past waiting for a new home. Elias, he just needed something to fill the silence in his own quiet apartment, something that wasn't the hum of the fridge or the creak of the floorboards under his own heavy steps. He paid the old man a twenty, didn't haggle. Didn't have the energy for it.

Back home, he set it on the mantle above the cold fireplace, wiping away a century of dust with the sleeve of his worn flannel. He gave the key a few turns, a satisfying click and grind, and watched. The pendulum swung, slow and steady. *Tick… tock…* He waited for the minute hand to jump, for the second hand to sweep. Nothing. He peered closer, squinting in the dim afternoon light filtering through the grimy window. The second hand, a thin, elegant needle, was moving. But not the way it should. It was crawling, relentlessly, counter-clockwise. *Tick… tock…* backwards.

Elias blinked. He rubbed his eyes, thinking the whiskey he'd had for lunch was finally catching up to him. He leaned in again. No, it wasn't an illusion. The hand was moving, alright, pulling against the natural flow. He watched it for a full minute, then another. The minute hand, then the hour hand, they all joined the bizarre procession, crawling steadily towards yesterday. It was illogical, impossible, a glitch in the very fabric of his living room. He tried to wind it again, forward this time, with desperate, fumbling fingers. The key turned, but the hands, they didn't care. They kept their strange, reverse journey.

Days bled into a week. The clock sat there, a silent, maddening counterpoint to the world outside his window. He’d wake, automatically check his wrist for his old digital, then his eyes would drift to the mantle. The clock always showed a time that had already passed. Two-thirty in the afternoon, when it was actually four. Six-oh-five in the morning, when the city outside was already buzzing at eight. It was a constant, unsettling whisper, a reminder of what was gone, what couldn’t be retrieved. He found himself thinking about Clara more. Not just thinking, but almost reliving. The way she laughed, a bright, clear sound. The scent of her shampoo. The feel of her hand in his. Memories, raw and unbidden, resurfacing like old photographs developing in reverse.

He tried covering it with a dishcloth once. The ticking, that soft, methodical *backwards* tick, still bled through. It was in his head, he knew. He’d find himself staring at it over his breakfast, over his lukewarm coffee, over another glass of cheap bourbon. It wasn't just a clock anymore; it was an anchor, dragging him further into the past, into the things he’d tried so hard to outrun. His failures, his caustic words, the moments he’d turned away when he should’ve held tight. The clock didn't rewind life, not really. It just rewound his mind, forcing him to sift through the wreckage of what he’d left behind, what he’d let go.

His hands trembled sometimes, holding the glass. He’d watch the minute hand creep back past the twelve, then the eleven. Each mark a moment further from *now*, closer to *then*. He wondered what would happen when it reached zero. Would the clock just stop? Would it reverse past its own creation? Or would it just keep going, unwinding into a void of non-existence? He felt a weird kinship with it, this broken, defiant little machine. He, too, felt like he was running backwards, pulled by the gravity of things he couldn't change. Time was a river, they said, always flowing forward. But for Elias, it felt like he was caught in an eddy, swirling against the current, caught on a snag.

One particularly grey Tuesday, the clock showed 3:17 PM. But it was 10:45 AM. He’d forgotten to wind it yesterday. A tiny victory, almost. He stood there, cup half-raised to his lips, staring at it. Then, a thought, cold and sharp, cut through the whiskey haze. He remembered the exact moment Clara left. The rain hammering against the window, her voice, tight and strained, saying words he couldn’t unhear. The clock, right then, showed 4:22 PM. His own clock, his backwards clock, was ticking towards that moment, like a countdown to his own personal, inescapable reckoning. He slammed the cup down, spilling coffee onto the worn rug.

He reached for it, his hand hovering over the dark wood. He could take it down. Throw it in the bin. Smash it with a hammer. Erase it, just like he wished he could erase so many other things. But the thought felt… pointless. It wouldn't stop the memory, wouldn't stop the feeling of cold dread that settled in his gut when he thought of Clara. The clock was just a clock. A peculiar, unsettling clock. It didn’t control time, not really. It just held up a mirror to the way he was already living. His fingers brushed the cool brass. The soft, rhythmic *tick… tock…* continued, pulling steadily, inevitably, towards a time that had already passed.