The Clockmaker Who Stole Tomorrow

The village of Marrowford had always smelled faintly of smoke and rain, a place where the river moved slower than the rest of the world. Nestled at the end of its crooked main street stood Ellis Bramwell’s Clockworks—a narrow shop with dust-speckled windows and a hundred ticking hearts beating in wood, brass, and glass. The villagers came for repairs, but they always left speaking in whispers, for there was something peculiar about Mr. Bramwell.

Ellis was not old, not young, and his eyes carried a constant shadow, as though he’d seen sunsets from centuries ago. He wore a brass chain on his waistcoat, but no one had ever seen the watch at the end of it. His clocks never ran late. Not by seconds, not by heartbeats. Some said he could make time itself obey him.

No one dared ask him about the back room. Customers never saw beyond the shop’s front counter—yet faint hums and sudden silences seeped from behind the locked oak door, along with a smell of ozone and something stranger, like lightning trapped in a bottle.

The Arrival

One evening, as a storm curled its fingers across the horizon, a young woman burst into the shop. Her coat was soaked, her hair clung to her cheeks, and her eyes—wild, desperate—locked onto Ellis.

“You’re the clockmaker,” she said, as though confirming a legend.

Ellis tilted his head. “That’s what the sign says.”

“You can fix… time.”

A pause, and then: “What makes you think it’s broken?”

She placed a broken silver pocket watch on the counter. Its glass was cracked, its hands unmoving. But Ellis didn’t look at it—he looked at her.

“What did you lose?” he asked.

She swallowed. “My brother. Yesterday. If I could go back—just a few hours—”

Ellis sighed, long and tired, as though she had asked for the moon and he’d once owned it. “Going back isn’t free. It’s not even… possible, in the way you think.” He ran a finger over the watch. “But I can give you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” she frowned. “He’s already gone.”

“Yes,” Ellis said. “But you can have a different tomorrow. One where the loss feels… different.”

The words made no sense, and yet they hooked into her like fishing wire. “What do you want in return?”

Ellis smiled faintly. “Everyone asks that. No one likes the answer.”

The Back Room

The woman—her name was Clara—followed Ellis through the locked door. Inside, time was no longer a polite sequence. Towering grandfather clocks leaned at odd angles, pendulums swinging too fast or too slow. A spiral of pocket watches hung from invisible strings, ticking in impossible syncopations. And at the room’s center sat a brass machine the size of a piano, all cogs and mirrors, its heart a glowing crystal that pulsed like a heartbeat.

Ellis placed the broken watch into a slot. “This is not about turning time backward,” he said. “It’s about unspooling what will be and knitting it again differently.”

Clara stared at the machine. “You mean… changing the future?”

“I mean stealing it,” Ellis said softly. “From yourself. From others. From the world. Every tomorrow I give someone has to come from somewhere else.”

She hesitated. “Where do you take them from?”

“From people who waste them,” Ellis said. “From those who’ve stopped caring they exist.”

The Price

Ellis pulled a lever, and the room seemed to inhale. Clocks stuttered. The crystal flared bright enough to burn the eyes. Clara felt her thoughts slow, as though submerged in water. A moment later, the machine exhaled, and Ellis removed the watch. It was whole again.

“It will start ticking at midnight,” Ellis said. “And you will wake in a tomorrow where your brother is not dead. But something will be missing.”

Clara’s breath caught. “What?”

“You won’t remember this shop. You won’t remember me. And someone else, somewhere, will not wake at all tomorrow.”

Her hands trembled around the watch. “And if I refuse?”

Ellis’s eyes were grave. “Then tomorrow will come as it always does.”

Clara thought of the empty seat at the breakfast table, the weight in her chest. She closed her fingers around the watch. “Do it.”

The Altered Tomorrow

When Clara woke, sunlight spilled warm through her curtains. Downstairs, the smell of coffee and cinnamon filled the air. She heard her brother laughing in the kitchen. The grief that had anchored her heart was gone, replaced by something soft and strange. But she could not remember why her cheeks were damp.

Somewhere across the world, a man failed to wake from his sleep.

Ellis’s Burden

Ellis sat in his shop, winding a small clock shaped like a birdcage. He never told clients the full truth. He didn’t tell Clara that the man who lost his tomorrow had been a writer on the verge of finishing a story that would have changed lives. Or that once, long ago, Ellis had stolen his own tomorrows until there were none left, leaving him forever caught between days, a prisoner of the shop.

He glanced at the watch on his chain—the one no one ever saw. Its hands did not move, for it no longer measured hours but debts. And tonight, as the storm faded, the watch’s face flickered faintly, a sign that someone else, somewhere, was beginning to notice the missing days.

The Knock at Midnight

Weeks later, as Ellis was closing shop, a knock came at the door. A boy stood there, no older than sixteen, with a letter in his hand.

“This is for you,” the boy said. “From someone who says you took their tomorrow.”

Ellis took the letter. The paper was warm, as though freshly plucked from the sun. Inside was a single line:

“I want it back.”

The clocks in the shop shivered. The crystal in the back room throbbed like a warning bell. Ellis had always believed the past was untouchable—but perhaps he’d been wrong. Someone was coming, not for a tomorrow, but for every one he’d ever stolen.

And for the first time in decades, Ellis felt something he had long forgotten: fear.

To Be Continued…

In Marrowford, the river still moved slower than the rest of the world, but in Ellis Bramwell’s shop, time itself was beginning to run out.

If you like, I can also make a part two where the person who lost their tomorrow hunts down Ellis through worlds of stolen time.

And thank you for read it.