The Man Who Bought a Minute”

A clockmaker in Amsterdam once claimed he could sell time — not in hours or days, but in single minutes. People laughed until he proved it. For one gold coin, you could live one minute twice.

At first, lovers used it to relive kisses. Soldiers to avoid bullets. Mothers to hold newborns again. But the minutes never returned unchanged — they whispered. Some came back hungry.

When the clockmaker died, his apprentice found his workshop filled with ticking sounds — but no clocks. Only heartbeats, sealed in glass jars, each labeled with a name and a time.