The Clockmaker’s Apprentice Who Could Erase Memories

The first time I met Mr. Alden, the town’s old clockmaker, he was fixing a watch that didn’t belong to anyone anymore. The hands had stopped at 3:17, and he stared at it like it held a secret he wasn’t ready to tell.

“Time doesn’t stop,” he said without looking up. “People just forget to wind it.”

I was sixteen then, looking for a summer job after my father passed away. My mother said I needed something to “keep my hands busy.” I found the small clock shop hidden between two taller buildings on Market Street. It smelled of oil, dust, and something faintly metallic — like time itself had a scent.

Mr. Alden agreed to take me on as his apprentice. But he gave one rule.
“Never open the drawer beneath the counter,” he said, eyes sharp behind round glasses. “Not everything broken needs fixing.”

For months, I learned to clean gears, polish brass, and listen — really listen — to the heartbeat of clocks. Mr. Alden spoke rarely, but when he did, his words stuck. He said every timepiece carried a story, and every tick was a memory refusing to fade.

Then one rainy afternoon, a woman entered. Her hands trembled as she placed an old pocket watch on the counter.
“It belonged to my brother,” she said softly. “He died in an accident. I just... can’t bear hearing it tick anymore.”

Mr. Alden nodded and took it gently, as though he was handling grief itself. When she left, he opened the forbidden drawer. Inside were dozens of watches, all stopped — their hands frozen, names engraved on their backs.

He placed her brother’s watch among them.

“What are those?” I asked, unable to hide my curiosity.

He paused. “They belong to people who wanted to forget.”

At first, I thought he was joking. But over time, I noticed how customers would leave crying, relieved, or strangely empty. They came not to fix clocks, but to erase something that haunted them.

I didn’t understand how he did it until one evening when he told me to close the shop early.
“There’s something I need to show you,” he said.

He took out an old pocket watch — one that looked different from the rest, with a cracked face and faint gold engravings. “This one,” he whispered, “is mine.”

He wound it once, and suddenly the shop seemed to hum. The ticking grew louder, echoing in my chest. I saw flickers — a young man in uniform, a burning letter, a woman crying at a station. The air shimmered like heat waves, and for a moment, I wasn’t in the shop anymore. I was inside his memories.

Then he stopped the watch, and everything went still.

“That’s how it works,” he said quietly. “Each watch carries the memory of a moment someone wishes they could forget. When I stop it, that memory fades from their mind — like dust blown off an old photograph.”

I stared at him, speechless. “So you erase people’s pain?”

“Only what they ask for,” he replied. “But there’s always a cost.”

The next morning, I found him gone. The shop door was locked from the inside, the drawer open, and every watch inside ticking again — hundreds of heartbeats filling the air like rain.

On the counter sat a note addressed to me:

> “Every clock must find its keeper.
Time doesn’t heal — it rewinds for those who dare to remember.”



Beside the note was his watch — the cracked one.

I didn’t touch it for days. But eventually, I wound it, just once. And the moment I did, I saw him again — standing at the train station from years ago, waving goodbye to someone he could never forget.

That’s when I realized the truth: he hadn’t vanished. He had simply erased himself.

Now, years later, I keep the shop open under a new name: The Memory Clockworks. People still come in — widows, soldiers, lovers — all carrying timepieces that hurt too much to keep. I listen, I nod, and sometimes, when the weight in their eyes is too heavy, I take the watch gently from their hands.

But unlike Mr. Alden, I never stop them.

Because I learned something he never did — some memories aren’t meant to be erased. They’re meant to teach us how to live with time, not against it.

When the nights are quiet and the clocks hum together in perfect rhythm, I sometimes hear another tick — a softer one, coming from the old cracked watch that still sits on the shelf.

And I smile.
Because somewhere, I think the clockmaker is still watching — not from beyond time, but from the pieces he left behind.