The Unwinding Hour

You want to know, don’t you? Why I’m here, why I got these hollowed-out eyes, why the tremor never quite leaves my left hand. It’s the clock. Not just any clock, mind you. The one on my mantel. The one that runs backward.

I bought it years ago, from a dusty antique shop down on Elm Street. Heavy thing, dark wood, brass face all tarnished. Paid next to nothing for it. The old man running the place, he just shrugged when I asked about its history. Said it came from an estate sale, just another piece of junk. Didn’t say anything about the hands.

For a week, it sat there, silent. Then, one Tuesday, I heard it. A soft tick. Not the usual forward march, though. It was a reverse beat. Every second, the minute hand jerked back. The hour hand, too, ever so slowly, pulled against the flow of time. I thought I was losing it. Replaced the battery, wound it, even took it apart myself with a screwdriver and a YouTube tutorial. Nothing. It just kept unwinding.

At first, it was a curiosity. A strange parlor trick. I’d show friends, watch their faces crease in confusion, then amusement. “Ain’t that somethin’,” they’d say. Then they’d forget it, move on to talk about the game or their mortgage. But I couldn't forget it. It began to pick at me, like a scab I couldn’t stop scratching.

It started with the small things. I’d look at it, and suddenly a conversation from that morning would replay in my head, but backward. A coffee spill that reversed itself. A muttered insult I’d forgotten, suddenly clear in my mind, then unsaid. It messed with my head, made me question everything. Was it real? Was I just going crazy?

Then it started digging deeper. The big stuff. Lily. My Lily. She was sixteen, all fire and tangled hair. Always felt like she was fighting me, fighting the world. I was busy, always busy. Work, bills, the never-ending grind. Too busy to listen, really listen, to the trembling in her voice, the way her eyes got too wide sometimes.

She came to me one night, rain streaking down the window, her face blotchy. Said she couldn’t take it anymore. Said she felt like she was disappearing, like no one saw her. I told her to pull herself together. Said she was being dramatic. Said all teenagers felt like that. I waved her off, told her I had a big presentation tomorrow. Told her to go to her room, sleep it off.

That was the last night I saw her. She was gone by morning. Just a note, a crumpled piece of paper on her bed. Three words: 'I can't anymore.' The cops searched, friends searched, I searched until my feet bled and my voice was raw. Nothing. Just a whisper in the wind, and a lifetime of silence.

The clock, when it started its backward march, it felt like a sick joke. Every tick, every minute hand jerking back, it screamed at me. It screamed of that night. It screamed of the words I didn’t say, the hug I didn’t give, the moment I chose my damn presentation over my own flesh and blood. It replayed it, over and over. Her hesitant knock on my study door. My irritable sigh. Her shoulders slumping as she walked away. It all unwound, a cruel, endless film.

I watch it now, sometimes for hours. The brass hands, always going the wrong way. They don’t change anything, of course. Time still marches forward in the world outside my window. But in here, in this room, on this mantel, it’s a constant, guttural reminder. A promise of undoing that can never be kept. A hope that’s a lie. I look at those hands, and I see her face, turning away from me, fading into the past, into the things I can’t ever un-say, can’t ever un-do. I just sit here and listen to it tick.

Always backward. Always. Just like my life feels now. Just like that night, replaying, never moving on. It just keeps ticking, taking me further and further away from a moment I'd give anything to go back to. Anything.