The Backward Tick

The grandfather clock was a beast. Six feet tall, dark oak, carved with what looked like dying leaves and grinning gargoyles. Arthur hated it the moment it arrived, a gift from some forgotten great-aunt’s estate. It swallowed light in their already dim living room, smelled faintly of mothballs and stale regret. "It's a relic," he grumbled, wiping a smear of dust from the glass face. "Looks like it belongs in a mausoleum."

Clara, though, she saw something else. "It's got character, Arthur. History." She ran a hand over the cold wood, a wistful look on her face. "Besides, it's antique. Worth something, probably." The first few days, it sat silent, an imposing shadow. Arthur tried to get it working, fiddling with the pendulum, winding the weights until his fingers ached. Nothing. He declared it dead, good for firewood.

Then, one Tuesday, Lily, their sixteen-year-old, pointed. "Dad. Look." Arthur squinted. The minute hand. It was moving. Slowly. Backwards. It wasn't just stuck; it was unwinding. He blinked, rubbed his eyes. No, he hadn't had too much whiskey. It was definitely moving counter-clockwise, pulling the minute hand with it, a relentless, quiet retreat. He swore, a low, guttural sound, and gave it a sharp kick. The sound of old wood groaning. The hands kept going.

Clara found it fascinating, at first. "Maybe it’s just… settling," she offered, peering close. "Or it needs a special winding key." But the days turned into weeks. The clock kept its backwards march, a steady, rhythmic *tock-ka-tock* that was just a beat off from anything normal. Mornings felt like evenings, evenings like early afternoon. Conversations, sometimes, felt like echoes. Like they’d had them before, the words rearranging themselves, the sharp edges of an old argument suddenly duller, then sharper again, as if the past wasn't quite done with them.

Arthur started feeling it most acutely in the garage. He’d be halfway through fixing the leaky faucet, tools scattered, water dripping, and suddenly he’d feel a weird pang, a sense he’d done this already. Not just fixed a faucet, but *this specific faucet*. He’d tighten a bolt, then find it loose again ten minutes later, or the wrong wrench in his hand, like he’d swapped them out without thinking. He started double-checking everything, his movements stiff, his brow perpetually furrowed.

Lily, she just found it creepy. "Can't we just get rid of it?" she'd plead, her voice tight. "It feels like it's sucking the life out of everything." She’d come home from school, drop her backpack, and instead of the usual rush to her room, she’d hesitate at the living room entrance, eyes fixed on the gargoyle’s chipped stone grin, the relentless rewind of the hands. She started feeling like her future was being pulled back, like every step forward in her life was being negated by the ticking in the hall. College applications felt like a waste of time, planning anything felt absurd.

One evening, over a silent, too-long dinner, Clara finally cracked. She slammed her fork down. "Remember that weekend, Arthur? When we went to the lake? Before Lily was born?" Arthur grunted, focused on his plate. "Which one? We went a lot."

"The one where we talked about everything. Where we planned… everything." Her voice was fragile. "I keep thinking about it. Like it just happened. Like we're still there, talking about baby names, about that little house we almost bought." A flicker of something in Arthur's eyes. He remembered it too. The sun on the water, the feel of her hand. It felt too close, too real, like it had happened yesterday, not eighteen years ago.

"It’s the clock, isn’t it?" Lily mumbled, pushing her food around. "It makes everything feel… old. Like we're just stuck in whatever happened already." Her voice cracked. She wasn't wrong. They were caught in some strange, temporal undertow. Arguments they’d had years ago would resurface in whispers, then loud accusations, as if the original pain was being refreshed, sharpened. The way Arthur never said *I love you* without a prompt, the way Clara always made *that* sigh, the way Lily always slammed her door. It was all on repeat, played backward, then forward, then backward again, the edges never softening.

Arthur finally looked up, really looked at Clara, then at Lily. Their faces were etched with the same weariness he felt. The relentless *tock-ka-tock* filled the silence, a quiet, insistent unmaking of time. He pushed his chair back, the scrape loud in the room. "Fine," he said, his voice rough, eyes narrowed at the dark wood and the impossibly moving hands. "Tomorrow. That thing goes out to the curb. Or I take an axe to it."

Clara stared at him, a strange mix of relief and something else, something like fear, in her eyes. Lily, though, for the first time in weeks, actually looked up, a spark of something almost like hope in her gaze. She still didn't smile, not really. But she watched her father, watched him walk towards that heavy, backward-ticking beast, his shoulders set, his jaw tight.