The Clockmaker’s Curse

The Clockmaker’s Curse

Prague was a city of whispers. Its cobbled streets and crooked alleys held centuries of secrets, and its shadows never truly rested. Tourists marveled at the Old Town Square, the Gothic spires, and the Astronomical Clock, but to the locals, time in Prague was more than a measurement. It was a presence.

Elias Novak knew this better than most. A watchmaker by trade, he had inherited his father’s small shop at the corner of Celetná Street. Rows of clocks ticked inside, their rhythms weaving into an almost hypnotic hum. But in the center of his workshop stood an object unlike the others: an ancient, brass timepiece that no key could wind and no mechanism could explain. His father had called it *The Hunger Clock.*

“It doesn’t count hours,” his father once whispered. “It counts souls.”

For years Elias ignored the strange clock, though its hands sometimes moved on their own, ticking forward when no one touched it. Customers claimed that when they stood too close, they heard whispers like faint voices buried beneath the gears. Elias brushed it off as imagination—until the night of the first disappearance.

It was winter. Snow lay heavy on the roofs, muffling the world in silence. A young tourist entered Elias’s shop, fascinated by the Hunger Clock. He leaned too close, his breath fogging its glass. The second hand twitched. The young man’s reflection in the glass blinked—though he himself had not. A week later, his body was found floating in the Vltava River, his watch missing, his eyes wide with terror.

Elias buried the memory, convincing himself it was coincidence. But the clock grew restless. Each night, its hands ticked louder, echoing through the shop as though demanding attention. The whispers grew bolder, forming words he could almost understand: *Feed me.*

One evening, a woman named Katarina entered. She was pale, with dark hair that seemed to absorb the light. Her eyes fixed on the Hunger Clock immediately. “It’s still here,” she said softly. “You should have destroyed it.”

Elias froze. “You know about this clock?”

“My family kept the records,” she replied. “The Hunger Clock was built in 1420, by a clockmaker who struck a bargain with something he should never have summoned. Time, you see, is alive. And it hungers.”

Her voice trembled as she explained. The clock was not a device but a prison, binding a fragment of something vast and ancient—a creature that fed on human time, devouring years in moments, leaving husks behind. It needed souls to keep turning. If left unfed, it would break free.

Elias laughed nervously, though inside dread coiled in his stomach. “Then why not destroy it?”

Katarina’s eyes darkened. “Because time cannot be destroyed. It can only be given shape. If you smash the clock, you unleash what it holds.”

That night, Elias dreamed of the original clockmaker. The man’s face was gaunt, his hands bloodstained as he worked feverishly on gears made of bone and brass. Behind him, a shadow stretched, its mouth endless, its whisper crawling into Elias’s ears: *You are chosen now.*

Elias woke drenched in sweat. The clock ticked louder, its hands spinning wildly. Shadows in the room elongated, bending toward it. With trembling fingers, he touched the glass. The whispers burst into screams.

The Hunger Clock’s hands stopped.

The next morning, Elias noticed the lines on his face had deepened. His reflection looked older. A decade of his life had vanished overnight.

Katarina returned, her expression grim. “It has claimed you. Once it begins, you can’t walk away. Either you feed it—or it feeds on you.”

Elias resisted at first. He locked the shop, refused to wind the clocks, tried to bury the Hunger Clock in the cellar. But at night it climbed back onto his workbench, its brass gleaming, its hands waiting. Stray cats vanished from the alley. Then a beggar. The clock’s ticks grew steady again.

The city felt it too. People whispered of sudden disappearances, of time behaving strangely. Tourists complained that their watches jumped hours forward, or that photographs blurred with faces that shouldn’t be there. An old priest muttered that Prague itself was shifting, its centuries-long heartbeat tied to something unnatural.

Elias’s guilt consumed him. But so did temptation. One evening, desperate, he placed his hand on the Hunger Clock and thought of his debts, his loneliness, the decades he might never see. The clock shuddered. And then—he felt stronger. Younger. The lines on his face receded. Somewhere in the city, a stranger collapsed dead, his life siphoned away.

The Hunger Clock purred like a beast that had been fed.

Katarina confronted him. “Do you understand what you’ve done? Every time you take from it, the city pays the price. Prague is a cage, and when it breaks, the world will feel it.”

But Elias was no longer listening. His shop thrummed with power, the clocks around him ticking in perfect unison. He could feel centuries whispering to him, offering him more time, more power, if only he surrendered.

On a snowy night, the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square froze at midnight. Tourists gasped as its figures stopped mid-motion. Across the city, every clock echoed the same silence—except for Elias’s shop. His Hunger Clock ticked on, louder and louder, its gears spinning as shadows coiled like serpents around its frame.

Katarina burst into the workshop, shouting prayers in a language Elias didn’t recognize. The Hunger Clock screamed, its glass cracking. Elias turned to her, but his eyes were no longer human. They were black, endless, filled with the reflection of countless faces screaming inside.

“You were right,” Elias whispered, his voice layered with thousands. “Time cannot be destroyed. But it can be mine.”

The Hunger Clock struck once, and the lights of Prague flickered. Windows shattered. For a heartbeat, the entire city aged a hundred years—then snapped back.

When silence returned, Elias and the Hunger Clock were gone.

But locals still whisper: on winter nights, if you walk past Celetná Street, you’ll hear the sound of a clock ticking where no shop stands. And if you lean too close to the shadows, you might see your reflection blink back at you—older, screaming—while your time drains away.